The "often hilarious and always compassionate" (New York Times Book Review) collected stories of a critically acclaimed, award-winning "American literary treasure" (Boston Globe), now in paperback, with a foreword by Elizabeth Strout. NPR BEST BOOK OF YEAR. MPLS STAR TRIBUNE HOLIDAY PICK.

• Each story is a crystalline window into the most intimate lives and thoughts of 1970s women that has resonance for readers today.
• Most were published in the '60s and '70s in Esquire and Saturday Evening Post, but there is at least one story that was written in 2020/pandemic-y times.
• In the title story, a bystander tries to soothe a woman who seems to have cracked under the pressures of motherhood.
• Full of wit and candor about agonies and ecstasies of domestic life.
• Think Lucia Berlin's A Manual for Cleaning Women meets Elizabeth Strout.
• This publication in hardcover was spearheaded by Meg Wolitzer, Hilma's daughter, and it had the same foreword by Elizabeth Strout. Hilma had just turned 91, which lead to a flurry of excitement, support, and tweets surrounding the publication of this book, including several feature pieces and interviews alongside daughter Meg.
• Now 92 years old, Hilma is as warm, sparkling, witty, brilliant, incredibly well read as ever.
• Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, and a National Indie Bestseller.