nomadreader

The backstory: The Position  was longlisted for the 2006 Orange Prize . I've previously read and enjoyed two of Wolitzer's other books: The Ten-Year Nap  and The Uncoupling . The basics: Roz and Paul Mellow, a happily married couple with four children, write a very famous book about sex. It features drawings of them in various positions, including one they create themselves. When their four children find a copy of the book, it impacts each of them a little differently. My thoughts: I expected The Position  to be wise, funny and perhaps awkward. As a new parent, I was fascinated by the perspectives of both parents and children. What I didn't expect was to see the action jump to the present (when written, so 2005) and have perspective to see where the six Mellows are now. This combination of past and present infuses The Position  with a much more ambitious premise, and it's a more powerful novel because of it. The four Mellow children were all different ages ...

The backstory: Meg Wolitzer's last novel, The Ten-Year Nap   was a five-star read for me , and I was eager to read The Uncoupling  since the moment I heard about it. The basics: At a seemingly normal high school in New Jersey, the new drama teacher picks Lysistrata  as the high school play. In the play, the women of ancient Greece stop having sex to protest the ongoing civil war. In Stellar Plains, women mysteriously lose the desire to have sex with the men in their lives. My thoughts: I was laughing out loud from the very first pages of this novel. Wolitzer manages to make the reader laugh without actually making fun of her characters. In her description of the Langs, the happily married couple who both teach at Stellar Plains, she says "even their pop quizzes were humane." The Langs continued to delight, as Wolitzer revealed the two chose the last name Lang: "They were casting off their old families, their old lives; why not cast off their names, too? 'L...

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine to highlight an upcoming release we can't wait to read. My pick this week is The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer. I thoroughly enjoyed Wolitzer's previous novel, The Ten-Year Nap , which was a 5-star read for me . I was thrilled when I heard about The Uncoupling . Here's how the publisher describes it: When the elliptical new drama teacher at Stellar Plains High School chooses for the school play   Lysistrata -the comedy by Aristophanes in which women stop having sex with men in order to end a war-a strange spell seems to be cast over the school. Or, at least, over the women. One by one throughout the high school community, perfectly healthy, normal women and teenage girls turn away from their husbands and boyfriends in the bedroom, for reasons they don't really understand. As the women worry over their loss of passion, and the men become by turns unhappy, offended, and above all, confused, both sides ar...

Lines worth remembering: "Later, when Jill tried to recreate the moment for Donald, she was unable to tell it n a way that gave it the real resonance is had possessed at the time." (p. 307) My thoughts:  The irony of this sentence, of course, is that Meg Wolitzer does not have this problem at all. I finished The Ten-Year Nap last week, but it's one of those books I've struggled with explaining why I loved it so much. Offering you a brief synopsis won't even begin to it justice. Yes, it's the story of four fortyish women of the means to stop working to care for their children. Their children, however, are now to the age they don't require constant care, and the women find themselves differently struggling with their place. To me, these women together represent the cumulative struggles, both emotional, financial and professional of so many women. Wolitzer alternates chapters with stories of these women's mothers and others from prior generation t...