I can't wait til I have something to post about a book that it universally positive. I had really high hopes for this book. I read and really enjoyed Meg Wolitzer's book from 2008, The Ten Year Nap. That novel was insightful; kind of sharp and world-weary in a way that I also thought myself at the time, despite that I was one year into what could have been my own ten year nap. I was weary before my time. So I did expect a lot from her follow-up look at the suburbs. Especially with the premise that the grumpy women of the suburbs have stopped having sex with their husbands. That's interesting! But * spoiler alert*, it turns out to be a spell? Led by a teenager? That ends with renewed understanding and hand holding? Boo. Let these adult women have some agency at least.
The terrible irony is that the self-determination and ferocity contained in the play of Lysistrata, performed in the town and which sparks the spell, just vaporises when Wolitzer transposes it onto her characters. The mirroring between the acting and the doing is so weak. I really felt so cheated.
On the strength of The Ten Year Nap, I still plan to catch up with The Position and The Wife, Wolitzer's earlier novels. Let's hope this one was an aberration.
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