[Mira, the heroine of "The Women's Room,"] starts out submissive and repressed, anxious to live up to other people's expectations of her. She ends up liberated but lonely, painfully adjusting to a new kind of life. It's the period in between that make the book so interesting. (p. 7)

The details of suburban life accumulate: balky ice-cube trays and Cub Scout meetings interlace with adulteries, attempted suicides and enforced stays in mental institutions. It's the small events that make the large events ring true, that remove from them any hint of the soap opera. Some shattering dramas occur in this book, but they're nearly always believable; we're willing to accept them as part of normal life.

Mira feels herself to be a victim, and stories told by victims tend to be long and narrow, as if strung through a funnel of suffering. "The Women's Room" is, in fact, very...