The Uncoupling

Oct 24, 2011 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars

This novel is an odd exploration of female desire and the changes in relationships through time. In a generic town in New Jersey, the production of the high school play Lysistrata, coincides with the enchantment of the women of the town with a spell that saps their desire. The narration is done by an omniscient narrator that is rather foreboding and irritating. The questions posed by the stories about passion and relationships are resonant and disturbing. And yet with that much emotional chaos a...more

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Apr 05, 2011 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Once upon a time... On a dark and stormy night…wait--there was no storm. Long ago and far away…but, it was only a few years ago, and not far if you live in suburban New Jersey. So, one dark and December night in the safe and tidy suburb of Stellar Plains, New Jersey, an arctic chill seeped under doors, a frigid blast blew through windows, and a glacial nipping swirled between the sheets of spouses and lovers. And, just as suddenly, the woman turned from their men, and stopped having sex.

A spell...more Once upon a time... On a dark and stormy night…wait--there was no storm. Long ago and far away…but, it was only a few years ago, and not far if you live in suburban New Jersey. So, one dark and December night in the safe and tidy suburb of Stellar Plains, New Jersey, an arctic chill seeped under doors, a frigid blast blew through windows, and a glacial nipping swirled between the sheets of spouses and lovers. And, just as suddenly, the woman turned from their men, and stopped having sex.

A spell had been cast, unbeknownst to the enchanted. Married woman turned in disgust from their husbands, and teen girls recoiled from their pimply boyfriends. The town was in chaos, but nobody was talking.

At the start of the new school year, the new bohemian and canny drama teacher, Fran Heller, had come to teach at Eleanor Roosevelt High School (Elro), where much of the action takes place. She was staging a production of Lysistrata, the ancient Greek play written by Aristophanes. And, in case you aren’t familiar with it, it is about an entire city of woman that resolves to stop having sex with their men in order to end the Peloponnesian War. That includes their favorite position—The Lioness on The Cheese Grater. Yeah, think about it! This extraordinary mission inflames the battle between the sexes in Athens, just as the suburban spell provokes a war between the mates in Stellar Plains.

Dory and Robby Lang, the central couple of the book, are spirited English teachers at Elro with a high approval rating with students. Until this spell, the Langs had a youthful vigor and robust sex life. Their sophomore daughter Willa, who Dory has deemed “conventional” (average), had found first love with Eli, the drama teacher’s son. But things are now frigid in the soundless fury of their house. Only their old lazy dog lingers to lick himself clean.

The Nordic, big-boned gym teacher, Ruth, had a largely healthy sex life with her sculptor husband—as active as one can expect with twin toddlers and an infant—all boys. She was not immune from the “enchantment,” either. Then there is Bev, a stout and menopausal woman with her hedge fund husband, Ed, who had said some cruel things to her not long ago. The spell has her in its grip, and she is fighting back frisky.

Does Leanne Bannerjee, the hot school psychologist, go on an icy sex strike when the wind chill factor blows her way? She has three boyfriends and a love life that rivals her students.

Wolitzer’s prose is gusty and cinematic, immaculate from start to finish, with well-considered, write-‘em-down one-liners and irrepressible, lucid characters. The voice and style are similar to Tom Perotta, but with a more whimsical moral thrust. The spell’s chaos must reach some conclusion, and this is where the reader enjoys sliding into the ice.

This is a domestic comedy/drama with some acid moments, some poignant insights, and a sprinkling of the psychology of love, coupling, and married life. To enjoy this book, it helps to be flexible about a few unrealistic elements present in a contemporary, earth-bound setting.

This is warm Wolitzer on ice, with a few Mazurkas and a double lutz finale. She did employ a risky contrivance, but it was an active choice, not a slack trick of the pen. Along the way, she demonstrates fine regard to our tech-savvy, digitally addicted society. A delicious sorbet book, this is sly chick-lit that pricks—and puts a spell on you.

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Apr 16, 2012 Miles rated it 5 of 5 stars

When a famous feminist author came to Reed College in the late 1970s, the men of Reed College learned that among her teachings was the notion that "hetero-sex is violence", and it was clear that some of our dreams for our sophomore year were not going to come true. Texts matter, and when, in Meg Wolitzer's "The Uncoupling", a high school drama teacher decides to stage Aristophane's Lysistrata, in which women of ancient Greece stage a sex strike to end the Peloponnesian war, we are once again in...more When a famous feminist author came to Reed College in the late 1970s, the men of Reed College learned that among her teachings was the notion that "hetero-sex is violence", and it was clear that some of our dreams for our sophomore year were not going to come true. Texts matter, and when, in Meg Wolitzer's "The Uncoupling", a high school drama teacher decides to stage Aristophane's Lysistrata, in which women of ancient Greece stage a sex strike to end the Peloponnesian war, we are once again in the place where ideas and texts have the power to change relationships, and, perhaps, the world.

One way to write any story is to imagine a world that is just like ours, except that one small thing is missing. For example, oranges. Or gasoline. Or prepositions. Or the letter "e", as in the case of La Disparition ("The Disappearance"), a 300-page French lipogrammatic novel by Georges Perec.

Or, you can imagine a world in which women, mysteriously (to them, and to the reader) lose interest in sex with their male partners. As an author, you pull the single thread of female desire for men out of the tapestry of life and you watch what unravels.

What you get in this case is a knife cutting through the strata of a suburban high school community, laying bare the inner realities of heterosexual relationships of many qualities and types. Sex, here, is the subject, to be sure, but it is also the veil that, when removed, creates a window through the skin of society. We are not shown everything about the many couples who populate this world, but we are shown the diversity of their loving and boring and thriving and dying heterosexual relationships, and the unraveling that occurs when the female partner experiences no desire and sex vanishes. Even though the women of this book are "infected" by the loss of desire, victims of a spell that none have any awareness of, some choose to claim the loss and to transform their new loss of interest in, even their revulsion for, the advances of their men, into their power.

The Lysistrata becomes real, Peloponnesia becomes modern Afghanistan, and the sexual becomes political. In this Lysistrata the women and men are no obscure Greek abstractions, but recognizable moderns, homosuburbius, wrapped in a dozen different familiar personal struggles. Hilarity ensues, of a dark kind, and if the political meaning of the chaotic dénouement is a little muddled, well, we had a nice ride through modern suburbia anyway. This is the story of the ambivalent pleasures of indifference, and the power that comes from not needing.

Wolitzer's imagining is well written, with particularly sensitive and thoughtful characterizations of the sexual lives of adolescents, female and male, as they stumble their way through first encounters and toward sexual and emotional self-awareness. She sets their experiences in contrast to the desires of protagonists in their 30s, 40s and 50s, yet draws women of all ages together in their common experience of loss of interest in men, and their shared wrestling with the place of men in their lives.

How would this story be different if it were the men who lost interest? I suppose that's another book.(less)

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Dec 24, 2012 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Emily by: People Magazine

I really want to like this book. I read it in just 3 days, so I guess that says something. But I didn't love it. I didn't find any of the characters compelling or particularly likeable (not that that's a problem for me: on the contrary, I love unlikeable characters. Case in point: The Descendants). Willa? Eh. The Dorys? Annoying. Bev? She's fat. Waah. Leanne? Wow she sleeps around what a whore. Nothing new here. The only character I liked a little bit was Ruth Winik, the ex-lesbian of sorts. But...more

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Apr 06, 2011 Megan rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, first-reads, 1-star

I liked the details Wolitzer used to describe her characters (I perked up whenever the picky and prickly Abby Means, she of the thrift store skirts and pornography-filled phone, showed up), but their lack of depth and, for the most part, drive, made this book a real drag to get through. The fairy-tale-ish, wishy-washy tone, coupled with the one-dimensional characters, was frustrating to me, because the book didn't seem grounded in reality. I don't mind magical realism at all, and in fact enjoy i...more

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May 10, 2011 rachel rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads, own, 2011

Meg Wolitzer's writing skirts the line between literary fiction and beach read. On one hand, she has a clever eye for human thought and folly that makes me look forward to her books. On the other hand, her plots are often novel and neatly wrapped up in a way that undermines whatever effort she puts into character building.

The same praise and criticism applies to The Uncoupling. However, it does have a truly terrible climax (appropriate for a book with a lot of fail sex) that is so cheesy it bel...more

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Apr 14, 2013 Katie rated it 3 of 5 stars

A high school puts on the play "Lysistrata" (the Greek play about the sex strike, where the women vow to stop sleeping with their men in order to get them to end the war) and the entire town gets overtaken by a mysterious "spell". The spell causes a case of life imitating art, where all the women in town suddenly become frigid and totally lose interest in sex. This is definitely magical realism, so take from that what you will (I used to adore magical realism, and I still like it when well-done,...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Emily Childress-Campbell rated it 4 of 5 stars

I like to think that our views on sex, feminism and desire have changed quite a bit since Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata, the ancient Greek play wherein all of the women withhold sex in an attempt to end the Peloponnesian War. So, I was a little bit wary when I first picked up Meg Wolitzer's 2011 novel The Uncoupling. Her story is not set in ancient Greece but the small suburban town of Stella Plains, New Jersey. Fran Heller, the new drama teacher at the local high school, has chosen Lysistrata f...more I like to think that our views on sex, feminism and desire have changed quite a bit since Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata, the ancient Greek play wherein all of the women withhold sex in an attempt to end the Peloponnesian War. So, I was a little bit wary when I first picked up Meg Wolitzer's 2011 novel The Uncoupling. Her story is not set in ancient Greece but the small suburban town of Stella Plains, New Jersey. Fran Heller, the new drama teacher at the local high school, has chosen Lysistrata for this year's high school play and, in doing so, has let loose a spell on all of the women of the town, causing them to “refrain from the male entirely” (as the title character in Lysistrata would say). These women, however, are not willingly performing a sex strike to end a war, but are suddenly robbed of their desire by some power and are left struggling to see what their lives are like in its wake.

It would be really easy for a book with such a premise to sacrifice its story to some lofty statement, some great pronouncement about war or women or desire, and the English major portion of my brain was crying out all through the first three chapters saying, “but what is she trying to say? Why is it only the women? Why is it only the heterosexuals? WHAT IS SHE SAYING ABOUT FEMALE DESIRE?!” When I finally shushed this part of me (“I'm trying to read, shut up!”) I began to appreciate Wolitzer's characters. Throughout her brief 271 page novel she writes from the point of view of seven different women. I began to see that it was pointless to ask what Wolitzer was saying about women, because she isn't describing women as a whole, she's describing Dory Lang, or Marrisa Claybourne or Leanne Bangee, to name a few, each of whose experience with sex or, in this case, the lack of it, is as different from each other as 2011 New Jersey is different from ancient Greece. Wolitzer has been compared to Tom Perrotta, famed writer of novels such as Little Children, The Abstinence Teacher or, most recently, The Leftovers (as far as I can tell a parody of Timothy LaHaye's Left Behind series, so loved and lauded by evangelicals). I love Perrotta and his quirky suburban satire, but Wolitzer is much too compassionate with her characters to even attempt to make them satirical. They are just people. She might poke fun at them the same way we poke fun at our friends but she knows them too well, and further more, the reader knows them too well to judge them. But we are not left completely bereft of some humorous commentary about our odd present moment. Within the world of the book she has created an online role playing network called “Farrest”, for example, that all of the high schoolers are constantly logged in to, an animated forest where participants can pick their own avatar such as a ninja or centaur and chat with their friends, an interesting mash up of World of Warcraft and Facebook. She also describes a large, yellow fleece blanket with two holes for heads that Robby buys for himself and his wife after they stop having sex. They sit under it on the couch while they watch t.v. It's called “The Cumfy” ( red headed step-child of the Snuggie, anyone?)

Without revealing too much about the ending I will say that this strange spell brought on by a small high school play in a small town does change the town and, without sounding too cliché, I hope I can say that the readers might be changed as well or at least left turning some things over in their mind. There is no easy answer to questions about desire and sexuality and in the end I was glad that Wolitzer stayed away from making any easy pronouncements about it except that it is not static, that it is changeable, that it is, above all else, individual. Towards the end of the book Leanne, the guidance counselor at the high school considers how she will answer the next time a girl asks her, “a blow job isn't sex at all, it's just a blow job”. Leanne “really hoped to be able to say, 'that depends on the blower and the blowee, it depends on the light in the room, it depends on the kindness of the guy'. And so on, and so on”. I left this book feeling privileged to have been allowed access and insight into the innermost lives of such a complex and real collection of characters. Because these characters are so unassuming and real, it is not that far of a leap to go from examining their most private desires to examining your own and I would claim, that, following Wolitzer's example, this examination can be done in a way free of preconceived notions, free of expectations, full of compassion, and with a touch of understanding humor.

(side note: I am crazy excited to read her newest book The Interestings!)(less)

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Jul 09, 2012 Cindy rated it 2 of 5 stars

She always seems to disappoint me -- though I've only read 2 of her books, maybe the others are better. The titles are intriguing -- "Ten Year Nap" and "Uncoupling" -- and the blurbs imply a good story about women's lives -- and I get to the end and think, "what?" I expect so much more from these stories, and it's nothing but shallow surface -- which I suppose might be the whole point. Ms Wolitzer writes about a class of women who are shallow and materialistic -- and most of all comfortable. The...more

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Jan 27, 2012 Ann rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

The storyline of this book can be summarized in a few sentences : when the new drama teacher at the local high school starts rehearsing "Lysistrata", the old greek comedy about how the Trojan women withheld sex from their warrior husbands in order to gain peace, a cold wind of sexlessness starts floating through the New Jersey suburb. WOmen and girls simply don't want to have sex, or intimacy, with their men any more. This applies to everyone, from old ladies to teenagers just discovering desire...more The storyline of this book can be summarized in a few sentences : when the new drama teacher at the local high school starts rehearsing "Lysistrata", the old greek comedy about how the Trojan women withheld sex from their warrior husbands in order to gain peace, a cold wind of sexlessness starts floating through the New Jersey suburb. WOmen and girls simply don't want to have sex, or intimacy, with their men any more. This applies to everyone, from old ladies to teenagers just discovering desire. The tension in the town mounts... until the night of the performance, when the curse is reversed, and everyone falls into their partner's arms again, begging forgiveness. Sexual attitudes are adjusted, and the drama teacher leaves town, her mission accomplished.

This book has a touch of magic-realism in it that I associate more with Latin American novels. The description of the curse moving through town, touching one couple after another, was well done, and was a move away from the realism of Meg Wolitzer's other novels. It was actually a bit of a disappointment that in the final chapter, it is revealed that the drama teacher knew all along that this was going to happen, yet is not a witch or a sorceress or a bruja.

The best parts of the book, for me, were the descriptions of the relationships between the couples. Some of it was too sloppy - it sounded like every middle-aged couple had been deliriously happy with their sex lives in the early days of their relationships. But especially the teenage couples were well described : the sudden discovery of desire, the supreme absorption in each other, the heartbreak. I was struck by the way the author knows how teenagers express themselves, whether it's by spraypainting graffiti on an overpass or choosing a new avatar for a SecondLife-type website. Some of the other couples did not ring quite so true. Overweight guidance counselor Bev and her hedge fund manager husband are a strange match - it didn't ring true to me. The lovesick school principal was a little over the top. The main characters, a couple of middle-aged English teachers, could have done with more drawing out - at some point it seemed that all Dory did was bemoan her former happiness. On the other hand, I totally "got" Ruth, the gym teacher who loves to come home to a household full of testosterone (one husband, three young sons) - until one day she can't bear to be touched any more, feeling like a "computer screen with a thousand fingerprints".

The overall theme of the book is hardly original : routine is the enemy of romance. Meg Wolitzer has managed to bring a fresh take on this old theme, in a book that, despite a few weaknesses, is overall very enjoyable and well written.
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Dec 27, 2011 Christina (Reading Thru The Night) rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, retelling-of-sorts

The Short of It

When the mood does not strike!

The Long of It

Set in the midst of a small town, the wind seems to blow in more than just a new drama teacher. Fran Heller, drama teacher extraordinaire chooses the Greek play Lysistrata for her debut. Lysistrata tells the story of women protesting war by withholding sex. Very few question the appropriateness of the play since Heller promises to tone down anything terribly inappropriate. Unfortunately, the play seems to have a ghost like charm on the t...more The Short of It

When the mood does not strike!

The Long of It

Set in the midst of a small town, the wind seems to blow in more than just a new drama teacher. Fran Heller, drama teacher extraordinaire chooses the Greek play Lysistrata for her debut. Lysistrata tells the story of women protesting war by withholding sex. Very few question the appropriateness of the play since Heller promises to tone down anything terribly inappropriate. Unfortunately, the play seems to have a ghost like charm on the townsfolk as everyone from the very sexually active school psychologist, the lovingly married English teachers, the middle-aged couple, and the explorative high schoolers begin to snub their noses at sex.

The Thoughts about It

This is my first Meg Wolitzer book and I must admit, two weeks since reading it, I am still very much on the fence. Part of me wants to be enthused. Choosing a Greek play as the backdrop is quite smart and the writing ultimately was astute and witty. BUT sometimes it just felt like it was trying too hard to be that a SMART book. Does that make sense? Like, maybe it felt a little pretentious to me? And the ending. Sheesh. The whole time the novel is moving along I’m an intelligent buckaroo…and then as soon as the ending strikes, it’s as though the Cliff Notes version wrapped it up just in case I missed something.

But here’s what I did really like: Robby and Dory, the two English teachers who worked together, loved together, and lived together? They’re relationship was great. It was humorous and yet still a bit snippy. Plus, I thought Wolitzer nailed it how the lack of desire can just sometimes HIT YOU without you expecting it. It’s brave, in my opinion, to bring up in a book the possibility that you could love someone deeply but cringe at the thought of them touching you.

Plus, because there were so many different sexual relationships going on in the novel, it allowed for sexual affections to be explored in all forms. I especially dug the high school girls and their reactions to sexual discovery. Or in the case of the dramaqueen, the possibility of using sex to make a point.

Ouch and there was this one scene…and if you’ve read it, YOU KNOW what scene I’m talking about…between the middle-aged couple that just made me want to turn away, close my eyes tightly and cover my ears. I didn’t want to be privy of their conversation.
And I guess that ultimately does say something HUGELY positive about Wolitzer’s writing. Because there were enough scenes that I felt I was wrongly eavesdropping in on. She captures human interactions PERFECTLY.

So you see why I’m on the fence here? I could easily be swayed either way.(less)

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Oct 24, 2011 Laura rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: borrowed-from-public-library

A rushed review-actually, the reason I read this is because I was rushing through the library, saw the author's name, vaguely remembered liking The Ten Year Nap, and grabbing it without reading the inside cover to see what it was about. Basically, couples in a town stop having sex with each other. The women suddenly decide that they're done, leaving their husbands/boyfriends bewildered, and in some cases, a little angry. While parts of it were actually quite funny and well-written (one man prett...more

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Sep 26, 2011 Laura rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm not sure why I read this book, as I wasn't particularly fond of the 'Ten Year Nap'. Her characters are all kind of irritating and a stretch to relate to; the concept of the book (what happens when a town goes without sex for a few month) was kind of interesting to me and I thought that the possibilities would be better explored. It would have been better if the spell hit everyone at once; also, the incredible selfishness of the drama teacher was a little tough to swallow at the end - the fac...more

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Jul 08, 2011 marg rated it 4 of 5 stars

(This really deserves 3, 3.5 - I will explain).
The Talmud speaks about a time when, because temptation was so strong, leaders prayed that the stirrings of desire would be taken away and allow people to live freely and purely. However, upon the vanishing of the more basic components of the human experience, life as we know it - animal, plant - shriveled up as well. This lesson resonated then, and was called to mind upon reading this work which, like Wolitzer's others, presents an interesting if s...more

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Jun 15, 2011 Jane rated it 2 of 5 stars

Interesting intellectual premise: a young drama teacher with her own unique marriage "arrangement," discovers that when she directs the play Lysistrata, the womean in the town begin to imitate the women in the play. This premise is pushed way too far and the characters aren't developed. Still, I occasionally laughed out loud. Here's one passage that an English student has written, A couple, both English teachers, discusses the student paper as they lie in bed at night. "At the time that Virginia...more

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Jun 01, 2011 Judy rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 21st-century-fiction

I am so over Meg Wolitzer. My three novel study, read in under two weeks, rendered me in turn unable to stay awake during the day, unable to sleep at night, unable to digest my food, and generally irritable all over. She is simply a bad writer and I cannot fathom how she gets even one good review, though she gets many.

What she does do well is capture and relate the thoughts women have privately as well as the commonplace emotions of women. It is true that we only share those thoughts and feeling...more I am so over Meg Wolitzer. My three novel study, read in under two weeks, rendered me in turn unable to stay awake during the day, unable to sleep at night, unable to digest my food, and generally irritable all over. She is simply a bad writer and I cannot fathom how she gets even one good review, though she gets many.

What she does do well is capture and relate the thoughts women have privately as well as the commonplace emotions of women. It is true that we only share those thoughts and feelings privately, even with other women. Possibly despite feminism, consciousness raising and even the age of confessional memoir, we are most of us somewhat ashamed to think or feel as we do. So to read our thoughts and feelings in a novel is startling and comforting at the same time.

In The Uncoupling, a new drama teacher arrives at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Stellar Plains, New Jersey. Fran Heller is unconventional in dress, attitude and lifestyle. Supposedly she has a husband living in Michigan with whom she is still very much in love. They talk everyday and visit each other several times a year. Their teenage son lives with Fran during the school year and with his father in the summer.

Fran chooses for the school play a Greek comedy by Aristophanes. In "Lysistrata" the women agree to stop having sex with men until the endless Peloponnesian War is over. On the day that auditions open, an enchantment, accompanied by cold winds, comes over several women, rendering them suddenly undesireous of sex. As the weeks of rehearsal pass more and more females, including sexually active teens, give up sex. The denied men become variously confused, heart broken, frustrated, or openly angry.

It takes her about 100 pages to set all this in place and despite the ineptly contrived back stories, some improbable characters and tone deaf dialogue, I was intrigued. The next 100 pages were a punishing description of how all the women and men interacted, felt, and made unsuccessful attempts to communicate about what was happening.

I will concede that the teen characters were accurately, even humorously, almost sympathetically portrayed. I can appreciate that Meg Wolitzer has a keen eye for people of all ages and both sexes as well as an accurate finger on the pulse of modern society. She just can't write well about most of it.

Reading Wolitzer is like taking a ride with a bad driver. Her prose is uneven. She will write a stunning metaphor and then fall into the oddest, nausea producing imagery. After pages of plodding paragraphs, she will finally get a bit of drama going, only to let it fall flat. I am always aware that any given character is an example of a type, until I utterly fail to care about what happens to any of them.

After tantalizing references to the war in Afghanistan, to teenage sexual awareness and dependence on social networking plus texting, or to the loss of sexual interest amongst married middle-aged couples, she winds up her story of dubious enchantment with platitudes. Give me a break!(less)

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Apr 21, 2011 Jacqie rated it 3 of 5 stars

This novel was readable, but the author's humorous, somewhat cynical distance from her characters kept me at a distance too. But there is some good writing there. The scenes of teenage Willa and her first boyfriend were poignant and evocative of my own teen insecurities. Bev's hurt at her husband's callous statement about her weight was also well done. Unfortunately, the main characters, Dory (?) and Rob, rang the least true. They had almost no personalities except to be nice, if somewhat judgme...more

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Apr 07, 2011 Luanne Ollivier rated it 3 of 5 stars

Meg Wolitzer is an best-selling author I haven't read before, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I started to read The Uncoupling.

Robby and Dory Lang are high school teachers in a small suburban town in New Jersey. They are favourites among the students, well thought of in the town and still madly in love with each other after 20 plus years. Until...a new drama teacher comes to teach at the school. The play she decides to stage seems to unleash a change and shift in attitudes, outlooks a...more Meg Wolitzer is an best-selling author I haven't read before, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I started to read The Uncoupling.

Robby and Dory Lang are high school teachers in a small suburban town in New Jersey. They are favourites among the students, well thought of in the town and still madly in love with each other after 20 plus years. Until...a new drama teacher comes to teach at the school. The play she decides to stage seems to unleash a change and shift in attitudes, outlooks and routine, not just with Robby and Dory, but the entire town.

"It was the cold air of the spell, come to claim her. Other spells were far more dramatic, accompanied as they were by lightning or a sizzling clang of thunderclap. This spell was more subtle, but still when it first came over a woman it was shocking, perhaps even grotesque, and she didn't have any idea that she was under it. Dory Lang simply felt as if she was freezing, and then she was aware of a mild disgust, no, even a mild horror at being touched. Certainly not pleasure, no, even a mild horror at being touched. Certainly not pleasure; none of that for her anymore. Her body momentarily shook - a brief death rattle, a death-of-sex rattle, technically - and then it stopped."
The play? Lysistrata - an ancient Greek comedy in which the women withhold sex in order to persuade the men to end the war.

Although Lysistrata is about denying, The Uncoupling is about loss of interest on the part of the women and the effect it has on the men in their lives and the rippling repercussions. Although Dory is the lead character, the other women in the town were just as interesting. I liked that Wolitzer explored women of all ages and life situations. Each age has a different outlook and situation to draw from. I very much enjoyed the exploration of the effects on all of the residents of the town, not just the women.

Where I got a little bogged down was the 'spell' part of the book. The ending was okay but a little too 'magical' for me - although the unnamed narrator of the book seems finally revealed. Albert Einstein once said, "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

The Uncoupling is a fascinating exploration or marriage, desire, intimacy and relationships that will have you stopping to think. This would be a thought provoking choice for a book club.(less)

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Mar 28, 2011 Heidi rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

The Uncoupling -- by Meg Wolitzer

The new and eccentric drama teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High School makes a radical choice and announces the school play will be Lysistrata, a Greek comedy by Aristophanes in which women withhold sex from men until war is over. As the play is rehearsed in preparation for the only performance, a spell is cast over the citizens of the small New Jersey town. The spell leaves no one's sex life untouched as women lose all interest, and not even the perfect couple, f...more

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Jan 02, 2011 Brenda Rupp rated it 3 of 5 stars

I really do not like to write anything bad about an authors new book. I have had a rough time lately as I broke my neck in a car accident and am in a neck brace. I thought the book was slow. The first part is where the author introduces us to her characters, and builds their backgrounds up so we should feel attached to them. The second section is where the uncoupling slowly happens not only to the main couple introduced in the first section but also seems to be happening to others inside the the...more I really do not like to write anything bad about an authors new book. I have had a rough time lately as I broke my neck in a car accident and am in a neck brace. I thought the book was slow. The first part is where the author introduces us to her characters, and builds their backgrounds up so we should feel attached to them. The second section is where the uncoupling slowly happens not only to the main couple introduced in the first section but also seems to be happening to others inside the the main characters lives, at work and at home and some beyond. The third section is the last one and that is where I got interested, the most amazing and not so predictable ending is wound. You know what is causing the things that are happening, but in the end you find you don't know everything at all. There is a surprise ending. I think there was somehting to my giving the book only 3 stars, I liked the book, I finished the book, and I was surprized by the last section of the book. Others gave the book three stars also so I don't think it was my situation that made the book seem slow to me. Here is the information from the back of the book: 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.(less(less)

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Oct 09, 2010 Suzanna rated it 5 of 5 stars

Meg Wolitzer has a way of packing intelligence and humor into every sentence. I have to admit, I'm a longtime fan. Follow the citizens of the suburban town of Stellar Plains, New Jersey, as they stumble through the "dilemma" of their uncoupling. The pace is relentless. Wolitzer dives into her subject by writing full, deep characters. I felt like they were all my new best friends. You'll laugh, think, and notice -- through her laser sharp eye -- the absurd details of modern life, as if you were w...more

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Sep 21, 2011 Shannon Alexander rated it 3 of 5 stars

Three stars is even a little generous- this book is SUCH a dip in quality from her previous books. The plot is heavy handed -I get it, people stop having sex because the high school is putting on Lysistrata! Every description of the book says so there is no reason to even mention it more than once, and certainly not OVER AND OVER in the book. It's like she forgot who she was writing for, her previous books seemed not to assume the reader was a total idiot. She still writes characters well overal...more

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Aug 19, 2011 Cherylann rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: feminist-themes, magical-realism

While I have at least 2 more Meg Wolitzer books sitting on my bookshelves, Uncoupling is the first I've read by her. Wow! I don't quite know why I haven't read any Wolitzer sooner - if her other books are anything like this one. I like the writing style of the book. It's descriptive without being flowery. It's explanatory without preaching. In short, it's smart. I was trying to compare the style of this book to others, and I kept coming up a bit short. She's sort of like Judy Blume - but not rea...more

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Jun 06, 2011 Gayla Bassham rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-reads

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 02, 2013 Snotchocheez rated it 4 of 5 stars

I kept Ms. Wolitzer's name on my mental backburner for several months now...not necessarily because of the recent release of her The Interestings (which three of my Goodreads friends have already read and favorably reviewed) but because of her jacket blurb endorsement on the back of Nicholson Baker's "Book of Raunch" (aka House of Holes...and I'm all like "yeah! she loves bad porn! Gotta read her pronto!" Unless sales go through the roof, it's doubtful my little library's gonna get The Interesti...more

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Jul 26, 2011 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

The women of a small New Jersey town suddenly lose interest in "intimacy" with their husbands/boyfriends. A high school performance of "Lysistrata" is somehow the catalyst. Or a mysterious roaming patch of cold air is. The storyline didn't work for me, but Wolitzer's writing kept me engaged.

Not quite a novel, but not interconnected short stories either. This is more a collection of character studies. The characters didn't understand why they were acting the way they did. They weren't making a p...more The women of a small New Jersey town suddenly lose interest in "intimacy" with their husbands/boyfriends. A high school performance of "Lysistrata" is somehow the catalyst. Or a mysterious roaming patch of cold air is. The storyline didn't work for me, but Wolitzer's writing kept me engaged.

Not quite a novel, but not interconnected short stories either. This is more a collection of character studies. The characters didn't understand why they were acting the way they did. They weren't making a political statement, showing solidarity with each other, or even making any conscious choices. They were just being bitchy, and they themselves couldn't figure out why. Fair enough that they felt bad about it, but still, they kept up their "regret-making ways."

It seemed that some sort of magical spell was supposed to be moving the plot along, but that wasn't fully developed either. Joanne Harris' "Chocolat" had a stranger come to town and through something like spells and concoctions, reveal truths, heal relationships, etc. "The Uncoupling" could have used its stranger-in-town, drama teacher character the same way, or it could have done more with the creepy herb shop angle. The "Chekhov's gun" technique isn't in play here. Things that could have explained the story or moved it along were randomly picked up and then randomly abandoned.

Maybe I missed something because I've never read "Lysistrata"?

On the other hand, I enjoyed Wolitzer's descriptions of her characters and the smaller details of their lives. Crystal-clear snapshots of middle- to upper-middle-class life today, right now, while technology moves us along faster and faster. Maybe Wolitzer is having fun with our own narcissistic tendencies, the way she reflects us back so vividly to ourselves.

Today's teenagers are the real delight in the book. Not that the teenage characters do much that's interesting. But Wolitzer presents (and repeats) adults' ambivalent reactions to them. Teenagers in today's suburbia are full of "information with no context"; the most empty-headed cases name their babies "Trivet"; etc. The teachers, parents, and counselors have familiar-sounding (timeless?) complaints about "kids these days." The complaints are often funny, and end up balanced a little with quiet observations praising kids' online activism, for example. Good introduction to "teenology." (less)

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Mar 31, 2012 Colleen Oakes rated it 3 of 5 stars

Were you forced to read the play Lysistrata in college? I was, by my loony tunes drama teacher, who gave us more than one dramatic reading of the play, in which the women of Greece give up sex with their husbands to force an end to a seemingly endless war. Yeah, good stuff that play. The Uncoupling is based on that play, a classic retelling with a little bit of magic. All the women that work or attend a suburban high school are struck with a spell that makes them turn away from their men. Teache...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Morgan rated it 2 of 5 stars

While designations of Wolitzer's The Wife as "mere" chick lit outraged me, The Uncoupling really was nothing more than a trite, generic tale of suburbia and all of the caricatures existing therein. The prose was lazy, the theme oversimplified. While I liked the eerie, Something Wicked This Way Comes vibe of a "spell" overtaking the women of Stellar Plains, NJ, Woliter's approach and delivery did little to convey anything meaningful about desire, the male/female dynamic, or the effects of a loss...more

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Feb 24, 2012 Pam rated it 2 of 5 stars

Didn't really care too much for this book. What initially drew me to it was the cover - I loved it but that really is a rather silly reason to read a book. It also sounded rather interesting. I have read one other of her books which I initally wasn't sure I liked but she pulled it out, so when I could get this book at a bargain price, I went for it.
Her claim to fame, I understand, is that she writes about real life subjects and relationships and makes readers think and she is true to herself in...more

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Dec 15, 2011 Bookphile rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, literary-fiction

When I first started reading The Uncoupling, I was hooked. Wolitzer has a way of painting such vivid scenes just by using the choicest of words or phrases, and she seemed to also be creating such complex characters. I was immediately emotionally vested in Dory and Robby and their marriage, and continued to be pulled in by the rather vast cast of characters. Unfortunately, things then began to fall apart. My biggest disappointment was that, what started out strong went out with a whimper. The boo...more When I first started reading The Uncoupling, I was hooked. Wolitzer has a way of painting such vivid scenes just by using the choicest of words or phrases, and she seemed to also be creating such complex characters. I was immediately emotionally vested in Dory and Robby and their marriage, and continued to be pulled in by the rather vast cast of characters. Unfortunately, things then began to fall apart. My biggest disappointment was that, what started out strong went out with a whimper. The book felt gimmicky, and I couldn't shake the sense that Wolitzer got right up to the edge of creating a really compelling novel, but then just couldn't quite find the momentum to take it over. Instead, the entire narrative ends up falling really short. Some spoilers ahead.

This is a shame, because Wolitzer is really scratching the surface of some interesting themes here, and this book could have been such a strong exploration of the lives of women at various stages of life, and what drives them. Sure, this is a book about sex, but it's also a book that offers up some other themes that are just as deep, but then fails to deliver on them. We have Dory's sense of fatigue with the sameness of her marriage. We have Bev's body issues. We have the gym teacher's sense that her body belongs to everyone but her, that nothing is really hers and hers alone. I really liked all of these themes, and I desperately wanted to see them fully developed, but they never were. Instead, we get a deus ex machina (appropriate, I suppose, since this book centers around the performance of an ancient Greek comedy) and everything seems magically resolved.

I was also very disappointed in Fran's reaction at the end. It would have been a nicely done bit of poetic justice, but I never cared enough about Fran to feel much of anything about the way her plan backfired. It was also difficult for me to figure out what motivated her to go from town to town staging the play, and I think this is because Wolitzer was rather vague about this aspect. Does Fran do it because she wants to help people? It sort of sounds like that, but not entirely. Does she do it just because she can? It also sort of sounds like that.

My other big issue with the novel was that there was a whole lot of telling but not as much showing. We're explicitly told that the gym teacher feels like she has nothing for herself, but not given many examples of it. Instead, we see her one time in the kitchen where she starts out happy but them immediately becomes dissatisfied. I just could not buy this. Was she actually growing more and more discontent all along and this simply didn't come through? Had Wolitzer spent a little more time establishing this character, that sort of question would have been answered.

When I think about summarizing the book succinctly, I'd say it comes across as an outline. It's as if Wolitzer had a list of various types of dissatisfaction and then she created characters who fit the molds. They were then inserted into the story, with a little bit of narrative, and that was that. While I did find Dory to be well-developed, the other characters felt to me more like types than like actual people.

Finally, I really, strongly disliked the ending. The tone of the novel was so serious in general, and the misery of these women (particularly Dory) was so extreme that it felt kind of insulting to give it an after school special sort of ending. Yes, I did want a happy ending for Dory, but I wanted there to be some exploration, some change that led to it. There was none of this. Instead, the spell is broken, the men all get up on stage to profess their love, and that's the end. It's a disappointing final note to a disappointing novel.(less)

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