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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
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Summary
Summary
From the New York Times -bestselling author of The Ten-Year Nap, a funny, provocative, revealing novel about female desire.
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 are forced to look at their shared history, and at their sexual selves in a new light.
As she did to such acclaim with the New York Times bestseller The Ten-Year Nap, Wolitzer tackles an issue that has deep ramifications for women's lives, in a way that makes it funny, riveting, and totally fresh-allowing us to see our own lives through her insightful lens.
Read an essay about writing The Uncoupling from the author, Meg Wolitzer.
Author Notes
Meg Wolitzer was born on Long Island, New York on May 28, 1959. She is the daughter of novelist Hilma Wolitzer. She studied creative writing at Smith College and graduated from Brown University in 1981.
Her first novel, Sleepwalking, was published in 1982. Her other books include Hidden Pictures, This Is Your Life, Friends for Life, The Wife, The Position, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Uncoupling. Her short story Tea at the House was featured in 1998's Best American Short Stories collection. Her books This Is My Life and Surrender, Dorothy were adapted into films.
She has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop and Skidmore College and has written several Hollywood screenplays. She currently teaches writing at Columbia University. Her title, The Female Persuasion, made the bestseller list in 2018.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The latest from Wolitzer (The Ten Year Nap) is a plodding story with a killer hook: will the women of Stellar Plains, N.J., ever have sex again? After new high school drama teacher Fran Heller begins rehearsals for Lysistrata (in which the women of Greece refuse to have sex until the men end the Peloponnesian War), every girl and woman in the community is overcome by a "spell" that causes them to lose all desire for sex. No one is immune, not Dory Lang and her husband, Robby, the most popular English teachers at Eleanor Roosevelt High School; not Leanne Bannerjee, the beautiful school psychologist; or the overweight college counselor Bev Cutler, shackled to a callous hedge-fund manager husband. The Langs' teenaged daughter, Willa, who eventually lands the lead in the play, is also afflicted, wreaking havoc on her relationship with Fran's son, Eli. Despite the great premise and Wolitzer's confident prose, the story never really picks up any momentum, and the questions posed-about parenthood, sacrifice, expectations, and the viability of long-term relationships in the age of Twitter-are intriguing but lack wallop. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
A high school production of Lysistrata, a Greek play about women who conduct a sex strike to end a long civil war, casts an enchantment over the females in a suburban New Jersey town. Women of all ages begin to reject their husbands and lovers as the rehearsals begin. They can neither explain it nor overcome their need to lead sexless lives. Wolitzer weaves an interesting modern story, paralleling an ancient one. However, the resolution is something of a letdown. The literary mechanism of jumping from present to past for each character is overused and somewhat tedious. Well read by Angela Brazil, this book will appeal to readers of modern fiction. Recommended. ["Wolitzer again tackles a complicated and provocative subject, female sexuality, with creativity and insight," read the starred review of the Riverhead: Penguin hc, LJ 2/1/11; the Riverhead pb will publish in March 2012.-Ed.]-Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.