Review by New York Times Review
IMAGINE that every heterosexual man in a community went on strike, refusing to have sex with women until certain demands were met. Never mind what demands; just picture it. How far you get with this thought experiment depends on the dogged ingenuity of your imagination (assuming you can conjure more than an abandoned picket line strewn with trampled signs). As plots go, it's just silly. Reverse it, though, and everything changes. In Meg Wolitzer's latest novel, "The Uncoupling," as in Aristophanes' "Lysistrata," every woman, from those on the threshold of sexual awakening to those for whom sex is just a pleasurable memory, closes up shop. The ancient drama is set in Athens; the novel takes place in Stellar Plains, N.J., and the women and young girls work or matriculate at Eleanor Roosevelt High. There are significant differences. In the play, the women are persuaded to strike in order to accomplish an excellent goal: bringing an end to the Peloponnesian War. In the novel, the women aren't compelled by rhetoric; they're enchanted by a mysterious cold wind that blows through their houses, up their skirts, all the way into their hearts. And Aristophanes' women haven't stopped yearning for sex, so theirs is a genuine sacrifice, comic in its intensity. In contrast, the women of Stellar Plains suffer only the occasional twinge, "generic moments of longing." They're not on strike; they're just done. "The Uncoupling" is, of course, only partly a novel about magic. There's a witch of sorts, the new drama teacher, who selects "Lysistrata" as the school play. At first, the spell picks off women one at a time, each imagining herself alone in her doneness, but as rehearsals continue the ranks of the spellbound inexorably grow. The women turn, mostly in sorrow, to other pursuits. A young beauty becomes politically active. A shy girl discovers she can act. The plump school counselor starts loading up her frozen yogurt "with jimmies and coconut shreds and cookie crumbs." Naturally, their husbands and boyfriends are hurt, furious, bewildered. (In a forlorn attempt to achieve some kind of marital warmth, however asexual, one of them buys a two-person bathrobe, something called the Cumfy.) As the play moves into dress rehearsal, Stellar Plains simmers with discontent. Then - and not a moment too soon - comes opening night. In outline, this may sound like 1980s-style feminist Fiction, but Wolitzer has no such ax to grind/Although she's very interested in women, the men here, while not given as much space, are a sympathetic lot. There are no cartoon characters, no villains, in Stellar Plains. Before uncoupling, many of these men and women are loving and happy. The central pair, married English teachers, are still joyously sexual, still capable of surprising each other, "sensation hitting them, pow, pow, pow, like light hail popping against their bodies." The spell, then, is not a punishment, a balancing of the scales. It just happens, falling alike on the passionate and the blah. Although "The Uncoupling" is enchanting from start to finish, that owes less to the spell than it does to the way Wolitzer liberally and inventively populates her storytelling. When writers turn to the supernatural, their characters often suffer, losing dimension and I.Q. points as their creators bat them around. But Wolitzer has too much respect for her craft to let this happen. Her characters would be engaging even without that cold, intrusive wind. The adult cast includes a sad, sweet adulterer; a self-righteous hedge fund manager; a promiscuous psychologist; and a blowtorch artist whose wife, her head flung back and sideways in hasty pursuit of orgasm, achieves what he calls the "Guernica" look. Among the students are an endearingly timid sophomore and a pair of benighted dropouts who name their baby Trivet. ("They apparently thought they were naming it Trevor, or Travis, but they got confused") Wolitzer expertly draws her readers into the world of Eleanor Roosevelt High, where students can't understand why it's plagiarism when you've gone to all the trouble (actually staying home on a weeknight!) of finding Web site material and pasting it neatly together; where teachers grieve over children "prodded by pixels and clicks," burdened with "information, but no context. Butter, but no bread. Craving, but no longing." The students themselves are complex and unpredictable. They're forming their adult selves, and Wolitzer illuminates this erratic process with great skill. In one lovely moment, a teacher, gazing at a group of kids, humbly recognizes them as her fellows. "People! teachers called out in the classroom to get their attention, and that word described them best." THOUGHTFUL and touching, "The Uncoupling" is also very funny. Still, there's no getting around that spell, which seems to have been cast so that Wolitzer can explore the midlife sexuality of women - that turning away, or turning inward, that happens to so many who are unwilling to continue doggedly working at desirability, at desire itself. And if the alternative to just settling is playing erotic board games, is settling such a bad thing? Which is sadder - two adults lighting dozens of candles and trying to bathe together in a normal-size tub or TV night snuggling in a Cumfy? Wolitzer, despite being an intrepid social explorer, doesn't answer this question. The point of "The Uncoupling" is the exploration. Jincy Willett's latest novel is "The Writing Class."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 10, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Life begins to imitate art when Stellar Plains' edgy new drama teacher decides to stage Lysistrata as the high school's annual production. Faculty, administrators, and students alike are literally enchanted by Aristophanes' mordant antiwar comedy. Women and girls who are otherwise happily married or in a blossoming relationship suddenly decide to withhold their affections from their husbands, lovers, and boyfriends. The once passionate sex life of popular English teachers Robby and Dory Lang abruptly ends, as does the nascent relationship of their daughter Willa, who sharply breaks up with her first boyfriend. Most affected of all, however, is Marissa Clayborn, the charismatic young black girl cast in the play's lead, who decides to stage her own bed-in sex strike in protest of the war in Afghanistan. When Marissa fails to appear on opening night, all hell breaks loose as spurned men storm the stage demanding the resumption of normal relations. While zestfully exploring the nexus between complacency and desire, Wolitzer's hip, glib, impish scenario shrewdly examines the intricate connections between war and sex and perceptively illuminates the power of timeless literature.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by 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.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by 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.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Not previously known for whimsy, Wolitzer (The Ten-Year Nap, 2008, etc.) uses a magical premise to launch her sharp-eyed assessment of sexual desire in its permutations across generations and genders.A high-school production of Lysistrata casts a "spell" that causes every woman in the town of Stellar Plains, N.J., to lose interest in sex. That includes teenaged Willa Lang, who has barely had time to enjoy her first real romance, as well as her mother Dory, whose sudden indifference after years of enthusiastic marital intimacies pains and puzzles husband Robby. Dory and Robby are English teachers at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, where new drama teacher Fran Heller is rehearsing Aristophanes' centuries-old comedy about women withholding sex to stop warwhich inspires the play's star, Marissa Clayborn, to stage her own "sex strike" to call attention to the conflict in Afghanistan. The spell isn't the best fit for a writer of Wolitzer's comic gifts, and at first it seems like a long way to go to get to the novel's best scene, in which five female teachers ruefully remember the thrill of youthful physical love and its slow devolution into routine or obligation. The wincing recognition prompted by their comments is matched by the author's compassionate portraits of mostly decent, loving men unnerved by a sea change they can't comprehend or cope with. Hardest hit is Fran's son Eli, so distressed by Willa's rejection that he heads for his father's home in Michigan; Fran and husband Lowell decided long ago that the way to keep passion fresh was to live apart. The performance of Lysistrata, with Willa subbing for sex-striking Marissa, provokes a general healing that skirts perilously close to contrivance and sticky sentiment, but Wolitzer makes it work, thanks to sharp characterizations and acute observations on everything from the digital generation gap to the accommodations made in a long marriage.A risky strategy pays off for a smart author whose work both amuses and hits home.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
