Good Reads / Community Library Notes
The Uncoupling
Meg Wolitzer
Review by Priscilla Comen
The Uncoupling
Meg Wolitzer
Review by Priscilla Comen
The Uncoupling, by Meg Wolitzer, is the story of Dory and Robby, teachers at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, and their daughter Willa. Author Wolitzer takes ordinary people and their ordinary lives and creates a drama and a passion with them.
There’s also Leanne, the school psychologist and Fran Heller, the new drama teacher. When Dory and Robby have Fran and her son Eli over for dinner as a welcoming gesture, Willa and Eli ignore each other. One day during a fire drill, Dory sees them entwined in each other’s arms. Later, Willa and Eli take off their shirts in his bedroom. They have time only for each other. Mrs. Heller chooses a play for the year, It is Lysistrata, a classic piece of literature about a woman who leads the women of Greece in a sex strike to put an end to the long Peloponesian War. Mrs. Heller has produced this play in several other schools. Willa gets a part in the women’s chorus. After this, the unexpected happens.
Dory Lang refuses to make love with her husband Robby. Leanne, the school psychologist, has an active sex life in spite of what she advises her students. She “goes with” the principal even though he is married, and keeps two other men around her. Leanne likes all of them.
At the faculty pot luck dinner party at the Lang’s, all the teachers are drunk on wine and the drama teacher is at the upright piano. She plays show tunes and everyone sings, either on or off key, Unexpectedly, the principal arrives with his wife who has never been to this function. Leanne feels a spell come over her and tells the principal that she’s finished with him. She’s also finished with Carlos, the bartender, and Martin, the car salesman. Dory, too, refrains from her husband’s touch, like the women of ancient Greece.
When Willa is in the basement of Eli’s house with Eli, she, too, feels a cold wind. She realizes their relationship is going to end, so she ends it immediately. The gym teacher and her husband, Henry, have twin sons and an infant. She designs a dance for the Greek play of the year, and Marissa, the black girl who has been chosen to be the lead in the play tells Mrs Heller she can’t be in the play,. She has decided to be an activist, and to move her bed onto the grounds of the school then to lie in it alone. This is her way to call attention to the long war in Afghanistan. Newspapers record every day of this. Willa is chosen by Mrs. Heller to take Marissa’s place as Lysistrata.
Will the play be a success or a flop? Will the audience get involved? Will the spell ever go away? Author Wolitzer weaves a surreal plot around regular people and transforms them all. Find this imaginative book in the fiction room with others by Meg Wolitzer at your Mendocino Community Library.
There’s also Leanne, the school psychologist and Fran Heller, the new drama teacher. When Dory and Robby have Fran and her son Eli over for dinner as a welcoming gesture, Willa and Eli ignore each other. One day during a fire drill, Dory sees them entwined in each other’s arms. Later, Willa and Eli take off their shirts in his bedroom. They have time only for each other. Mrs. Heller chooses a play for the year, It is Lysistrata, a classic piece of literature about a woman who leads the women of Greece in a sex strike to put an end to the long Peloponesian War. Mrs. Heller has produced this play in several other schools. Willa gets a part in the women’s chorus. After this, the unexpected happens.
Dory Lang refuses to make love with her husband Robby. Leanne, the school psychologist, has an active sex life in spite of what she advises her students. She “goes with” the principal even though he is married, and keeps two other men around her. Leanne likes all of them.
At the faculty pot luck dinner party at the Lang’s, all the teachers are drunk on wine and the drama teacher is at the upright piano. She plays show tunes and everyone sings, either on or off key, Unexpectedly, the principal arrives with his wife who has never been to this function. Leanne feels a spell come over her and tells the principal that she’s finished with him. She’s also finished with Carlos, the bartender, and Martin, the car salesman. Dory, too, refrains from her husband’s touch, like the women of ancient Greece.
When Willa is in the basement of Eli’s house with Eli, she, too, feels a cold wind. She realizes their relationship is going to end, so she ends it immediately. The gym teacher and her husband, Henry, have twin sons and an infant. She designs a dance for the Greek play of the year, and Marissa, the black girl who has been chosen to be the lead in the play tells Mrs Heller she can’t be in the play,. She has decided to be an activist, and to move her bed onto the grounds of the school then to lie in it alone. This is her way to call attention to the long war in Afghanistan. Newspapers record every day of this. Willa is chosen by Mrs. Heller to take Marissa’s place as Lysistrata.
Will the play be a success or a flop? Will the audience get involved? Will the spell ever go away? Author Wolitzer weaves a surreal plot around regular people and transforms them all. Find this imaginative book in the fiction room with others by Meg Wolitzer at your Mendocino Community Library.