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79th out of 100 books
—
190 voters
The Position
by
Meg Wolitzer
Crackling with intelligence and humor, The Position is the masterful story of one extraordinary family at the hilarious height of the sexual revolution -- and through the thirty-year hangover that followed.
In 1975, Paul and Roz Mellow write a bestselling Joy of Sex-type book that mortifies their four school-aged children and ultimately changes the shape of the family forev...more
In 1975, Paul and Roz Mellow write a bestselling Joy of Sex-type book that mortifies their four school-aged children and ultimately changes the shape of the family forev...more
Paperback, 320 pages
Published
June 6th 2006
by Scribner
(first published March 8th 2005)
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Aug 23, 2009
Nathan
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
people who don't like Julia Glass
Shelves:
lies,
this-20th-century
Julia Glass of "Three Junes" and "Everyone In the Whole World Eats Things" (I made that last title up 'cause I can't think of the real one, but it's something like that) wrote the blurb on the back of this book, and it's worth quoting in full because it epitomizes everything I dislike about Julia Glass' work (but not necessarily about this book): "[The Position:] is the kind of book I'm always searching for but rarely find, one whose characters captivate me so completely that I am left, on the f...more
How would you and your siblings react if your parents had written the nation's best selling sex guide (complete with graphic illustrations of themselves demonstrating various positions) of the 1970's? This novel opens with the four Mellow children gathering in the den one afternoon to page through the volume. Their initial reactions as well as the lifelong effect of carrying the Mellow name and feeling like the whole world has watched your parents have sex over and over again is chronicled in th...more
Mar 14, 2008
Ruby
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
people who grew up in the seventies
Shelves:
fiction
I listened to Wolitzer give a talk at a writing conference in 2007. She said that she was intrigued by writing about the mundanities of life, like food and sex. She didn't think people wrote well about it.
She preached what was to me a curious distance--she didn't think that sex scenes should be titillating, and hers are mostly not.
Despite that, her characters are well developed, and her writing is very good. I was quite amused throughout most of the book. There appeared to me to be some point o...more
She preached what was to me a curious distance--she didn't think that sex scenes should be titillating, and hers are mostly not.
Despite that, her characters are well developed, and her writing is very good. I was quite amused throughout most of the book. There appeared to me to be some point o...more
Fantastic. Meg writes in a way that makes me want to write. She has a wit and a humor so subtle and smart that it takes my breath away.
Her knowledge of what makes people "tick" (especially CHILDREN) and the ways our young souls are marred is at such a depth that I wonder sometimes about her own story as I read: HOW does she know so much about human nature?
Brilliant, smart, biting and kind - a feminist who is not held down or in her anger. She sees well, she loves well, and I am always left chang...more
Her knowledge of what makes people "tick" (especially CHILDREN) and the ways our young souls are marred is at such a depth that I wonder sometimes about her own story as I read: HOW does she know so much about human nature?
Brilliant, smart, biting and kind - a feminist who is not held down or in her anger. She sees well, she loves well, and I am always left chang...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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Though this is her seventh novel, it is the first I have read by Meg Wolitzer. She is about ten years younger than me, so not the next generation but somewhere in between. The Position is marketed as humorous. I found it to be an attempt at irony but ultimately a sad story.
Paul and Roz Mellow, very much in love, deeply passionate, and in the process of raising four children, conceive of an idea. The result is a book called Pleasuring: One Couple's Journey to Fulfillment, complete with artist r...more
Paul and Roz Mellow, very much in love, deeply passionate, and in the process of raising four children, conceive of an idea. The result is a book called Pleasuring: One Couple's Journey to Fulfillment, complete with artist r...more
Meg Wolitzer's novel, "The Position" includes a plot so richly layered and interesting, on can doubt that it consists of this novelist's best work to date. "The Position" revolves around the family of the Mellows, suburbanites who, in the middle of the 70's, write a sex manual where they serve as the models for the paintings. While the manual takes off, making the family wealthy and the parents famous, at home things change. One evening the Mellows four children, ages 7-15 find and read the manu...more
When I first read the back of this book I thought it sounded potentially hilarious and at the very least quite interesting. And while the premise certainly is interesting, Wolitzer falls a little flat on her delivery. The story begins in the seventies when the Mellows first publish their how-to sex guide (featuring illustrations of themselves in all the positions!) but rapidly moves to the present day and focuses on the current lives and loves of the four grown children.
It's hard to imagine, but...more
It's hard to imagine, but...more
The premise of this book is so hugely comic that i was ready for anything. I love Wolitzer, whose fiction can elicit complicated reaction-- you are laughing so hard at the one-liners, the zingers, the flat-out brazen hilariousness of her observations, that the wisdom of the book is the quiet force. She is a major player, if she were humorless she'd win all the lit prizes, but i think it's lucky for everyone that she embraced her comic genius and become beloved instead.
So what she is really sayi...more
So what she is really sayi...more
Meg Wolitzer takes up an entire shelf at my local library. Where is a girl to start? Ten-Year Nap? Um, I haven't actually woken up from mine yet. So, no thanks. The Uncoupling? The Wife? Um, relationships are hard. I get it... So, no thanks. The Position? Let's see... Children haunted by parent's sex book. Crackling with intelligence and humor. Set in 1970s suburbia. That should be a suitable escape - nothing that hits too close to home.
Boy, was I wrong. This story, with its seemingly far-fetche...more
Boy, was I wrong. This story, with its seemingly far-fetche...more
The time was the mid-seventies. Paul and Roz Mellow lived in a suburb called Wontaucket, and on a "normal" weekend, their four children are spending the day alone while their parents are off giving a lecture.
The second oldest child, Michael, discovers the mysterious tome on a top shelf, bookended by something innocuous, but he is curious. Something about the way it seems almost hidden....
From that point on, the story unfolds as the children discover what the book entails and secretly share its c...more
The second oldest child, Michael, discovers the mysterious tome on a top shelf, bookended by something innocuous, but he is curious. Something about the way it seems almost hidden....
From that point on, the story unfolds as the children discover what the book entails and secretly share its c...more
"Florida leveled you. It didn't matter who you were. In the beginning you were besotted with the enormous high-colored flowers that looked like they had faces, and by the sauna atmosphere and grilled fish and abundance of citrus and pastel clothes and geniality of everyone you met, who like you had removed themselves from the din and clack of urban life, saying they'd had enough. But after a while you became a little aimless, dreaming at night of subways and coffee shops that stayed open until m...more
Reviewers enjoyed the well-drawn characters in Wolitzer's sixth novel, especially former druggie Holly, depressed Michael, gay Republican Dashiell, and the lost youngest sibling, Claudia. The humor hits the mark, and to many, this book resembled the family dysfunction played to such great effect in Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. Detractors felt that Wolitzer neglected to create the payoff for the complicated situations she so carefully set up, and that the family's release and forgiveness a
...more
A story about family. A study of one specific family.
I did not agree with some other reviews that felt the story centered too much on the publication and subsequent discovery by the kids of the sex book, or that the story emphasized the sex book event as the one thing that changed everyone’s lives forever and ever after that. I didn't really get that impression; the ensuing breakup/divorce more drastically and permanently affected the family dynamic...as divorces do...duh. (And yes, I did think...more
I did not agree with some other reviews that felt the story centered too much on the publication and subsequent discovery by the kids of the sex book, or that the story emphasized the sex book event as the one thing that changed everyone’s lives forever and ever after that. I didn't really get that impression; the ensuing breakup/divorce more drastically and permanently affected the family dynamic...as divorces do...duh. (And yes, I did think...more
Where to begin? I love Meg Wolitzer. Only recently did I become aware of her, and to date I've only read two of her books. But from what I know, from what I've read, this is the novelist for me. This is someone interested in the things I'm interested in -- human relationships, relationships between parents and children, relationships between lovers. There's romance here, but never sentimentality. There's sex, but it's always realistic and tasteful. She's not afraid to deal with the great existen...more
If you ever wondered what would happen if your teenage self discovered a sex manual written by your parents then this book will tell you.
It must be "The Joy Of Sex" as I cant remember anything else written in the 70's that was so well known.
The embarassment is there, the children now teenage virgins on the brink of sexual discovery are there,the parents now older and wiser are there. Unfortunately the story is so thin it almost blows away. It begs the question would you enjoy reading and looki...more
It must be "The Joy Of Sex" as I cant remember anything else written in the 70's that was so well known.
The embarassment is there, the children now teenage virgins on the brink of sexual discovery are there,the parents now older and wiser are there. Unfortunately the story is so thin it almost blows away. It begs the question would you enjoy reading and looki...more
Could've been longer, since there were four siblings and two parents whose separate lives were their own stories. I felt it was a short book for the potentially rich characters, family dynamics, and consequences that a sex book and divorce obviously had on the children. It seemed rather glossed over, despite everyone getting their own chapters a couple of times. The story was well-plotted, so it's not as if I felt there were any holes or anything. The characters were interesting enough that I wo...more
It's the mid-1970's and the height of the sexual revolution. A married couple (with 4 children) writes a Joy of Sex-type book which includes a position they created called "Electric Forgiveness" (and complete with very realistic illustrations of themselves!). It's a huge success. One of their young teenagers finds the book and shares it with his siblings (2 of whom are too young to grasp its real meaning). Fast forward 30 years, and the publisher wants to reissue an anniversary edition of "Pleas...more
Nov 11, 2012
Nicole
added it
Another book club book...it's pretty neurotic so far, but I'll let you know how it turns out.
Why I chose to read another book by this author, I don't know. But I was again disappointed and will never read anything by Wolitzer again. This book doesn't really go anywhere and spends more time in the past than in the present. Plus it shifts perspectives a lot and I know a little about a lot of characters, but never get an indepth look at one main character. Because of this, I didn't like ANY of the characters. I didn't get a fresh outlook on life from this book (and this is "serious" litera...more
As well-written, multiple-POV family sagas go, I place this one well ahead of Julia Glass' Three Junes and a little short of Michael Cunningham's Flesh and Blood. The novel is bookended by the issue and decades-later reissue of a sex manual by the parents, but mostly it's a collection of snapshots--though it's more carefully crafted than it seems at times. As we see how an early knowledge about sex affects each of the four Mellow children, we see in a more universal sense the effect of any sort...more
this book was like a jennifer aniston movie. trite, predictable, with painfully stereotyped characters. YET, much like the way i find myself watching jennifer aniston's movies in the first place, entertainment was indeed provided in a desperate moment. i proceeded with a morbid curiousity that got me through the book with only slight discomfort, but ultimately made me feel cheap.note, however, that jennifer aniston was amazing in 'the good girl'. well worth an hour and a half. much less time tha...more
I just could not get into this book at all. The premise was original and I looked forward to a tongue-in-cheek storyline - but found most of the characters completely unlikable and bland. I know the premise is how discovering their parents as the authors (and subjects) of "Pleasuring" affected the children as viewed in adulthood. However, I gave up about halfway through, just completely disengaged with where the children ended up. I wasn't expecting happy, well-adjusted adults, or crazily zany -...more
this book had me giddy in the first chapter, when the four children of sex-book authors discover their parent's famous book "pleasuring: one couple's journey to fufillment." while their parents are out, they examine the book, which includes an artists depiction of their parents in the various positions featured in the book.
awkward and very funny.
the story jumps ahead 30 years. the couple is now divorced and remarried and the children are grown. roz mellow wants her exhusband to agree to a reis...more
awkward and very funny.
the story jumps ahead 30 years. the couple is now divorced and remarried and the children are grown. roz mellow wants her exhusband to agree to a reis...more
I love character-driven fiction, but this is pretty character-heavy/plot-lite even for me.
The story here is great, but the set-up is tough: picking up 30 years after a particular event -- four children discovering that their parents had written, posed for, and would become famous for a sex guide -- makes it difficult to really go into much depth.
Each of the main characters, particularly the children, are supremely messed up, but Wolitzer is kind of asking her reader to do her a favor and just go...more
The story here is great, but the set-up is tough: picking up 30 years after a particular event -- four children discovering that their parents had written, posed for, and would become famous for a sex guide -- makes it difficult to really go into much depth.
Each of the main characters, particularly the children, are supremely messed up, but Wolitzer is kind of asking her reader to do her a favor and just go...more
Easy read, the author has fun with language and the subject matter. I initially picked this up on the sale shelf at Powell's PDX for airplane reading, as well as a nod to Meg Wolitzer's contribution to the most satisfying cryptic crossword puzzles I've come across, a feature she co-edited with Jesse Green in the magazine Civilization. The book served its purpose admirably, but has not made it to my permanent collection. I left it in Las Vegas airport for the next bookless traveler.
I've been on a real suburban fiction kick lately and this one really sung to me. It follows a family who lives change in the 70's after the parents write an illustrated sex manual a la "The Joy of Sex."
While the book becomes famous and offers the family money and fame, the (sex) lives of all four children and the parents are affected in many different ways as they move on to adulthood.
The prose in this is wonderful and it's not a Good Read but a great one.
While the book becomes famous and offers the family money and fame, the (sex) lives of all four children and the parents are affected in many different ways as they move on to adulthood.
The prose in this is wonderful and it's not a Good Read but a great one.
Holly Melllow refers snidely to her parents' bestseller as "F***ing: One Couple's Story of How to Do It and Why". This strikes me as quite an appropriate subtitle for this novel, as it is essentially about how sex and sexuality mess you up. The Mellows' book is the central character and, as such, I felt that the human characters felt a bit under-developed, despite devoting an entire chapter at a time to each person. Lacked climax, if you'll pardon the pun.
This was a difficult book for me to read. It stirs up a lot of feelings regarding siblings, coming to age, adulthood, parents, divorce and all the other fun things that mold us into what we are today. Focusing on a family of four kids and two hippy/anything goes parents... until everything does go and it just doesn't work any more. In a way, everyone copes or doesn't cope with the changes. It can be a tough read because at times it hits very close to home.
I really liked this author's latest book "The Ten-Year Nap", so I wanted to read this one also. The story revolves around the Mellow family; the parents, Roz & Paul, and their 4 kids - Holly, Michael, Dashiell and Claudia. The parents become famous in the 70s for writing a Kama Sutra-type book about married couples and their sex lives. As you could expect, the kids are all greatly affected by their parents' book & the fame and trouble that come with it.
Beware! If you are weary of sexual...more
Beware! If you are weary of sexual...more
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Meg Wolitzer is the author of
The Ten-Year Nap
and seven previous novels, including
The Position
and
The Wife
. Her short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize.
Author photo copyright Deborah Copaken.
More about Meg Wolitzer...
Author photo copyright Deborah Copaken.
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“No one had told her this would happen, that her girlishness would give way to the solid force of wifehood, motherhood. The choices available were all imperfect. If you chose to be with someone, you often wanted to be alone. If you chose to be alone, you often felt the unbearable need for another body - not necessarily for sex, but just to rub your foot, to sit across the table, to drop his things around the room in a way that was maddening but still served as a reminder that he was there.”
—
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“All of the women in that time and place, Thea had learned, were stuffed into muslin and starched cotton and forced to sit ramrod-straight and plait their hair or pull it back off their faces with fish oil. There were shoes that laced up with a hundred eyelets, and corsets that required a special hook to open. Women were all in it together back then, as opposed to now, when one woman's experience could differ so greatly from another's that you never knew who you were talking to.”
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More quotes…
"Three Junes"
"The Whole World Over"
"I see You Everwhere"
[Sorry it's a librarian thing. :P]
Aug 31, 2009 03:34pm