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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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THE POSITION

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.
The Position by Meg Wolitzer
'The book was called PLEASURING: One Couple's Journey to Fulfillment. The title, when the children had first heard it and begun to understand it, was so incontestably mortifying that it threatened to stunt them forever, leaving them locked in time and steadfast refusal to enter the adult world.'

The children are Holly and Michael, Dashiell and Claudia. And everything changes for them the day they read the book that their liberal parents Paul and Roz Mellow have written, a book that features tasteful pastel illustrations of their parents' lovemaking and that has become a runaway bestseller. Thirty years later, when the children who grew up in the shadow of these erotically charged parents are adults, and it looks as though the book may be reissued, we catch up with the twists and turns of their complicated 21st-century lives and those of the iconic couple whose marriage has not run as smoothly as it seemed set to do ...

Meg Wolitzer is married with two sons and lives in New York. Her previous novels include Sleepwalking, This is Your Life, Surrender Dorothy (currently being filmed by CBS with Diane Keaton in the leading role) and, most recently, The Wife.
Available products
Book

Published 2005-03-01 by Scribner

Book

Published 2005-03-01 by Scribner

Comments

We've seen Sex and the City. Now it's time for sex in the suburbs. ... Meg Wolitzer's smart new novel delves into much heavier stuff, examining how sex is inevitably intertwined with all the moments of life that happen outside the bedroom. Wolitzer writes with palpable intensity...proving once again that she is among the most satisfying of contemporary authors.

Sly and delicious. As an authorial presence, Wolitzer is motherly in the best way: engaged, caring, but never intrusive or judgmental. She may love all of the seven children of her novels equally, but The Position is certainly her richest and most substantial.

The premise of 'The Position seems rich with sitcom potential...But while savagely witty in spots, there is nothing funny about this book. Rather, in Meg Wolitzer's hands, The Position is a seething but ultimately accepting portrait of a family...Wolitzer skillfully traverses time and perspectives, alighting long enough on each family member to illuminate how each is stuck but how almost all manage to move on in spite of themselves.

The Position will leave you curled on the floor, weeping with bitterness and envy that SHE wrote it and not YOU. Or maybe that's just me. In any case, it's painfully funny and brilliantly executed while also being utterly original. I won't be reading any more of Ms. Wolitzer's books.

Wolitzer engagingly sketches the family members attempts at...finding closeness with others. As this clan learns, the most satisfying position is a permanent-ink place in someone's heart.

Mischievously funny... what sets and keeps you reading is not the high concept about the sex book but the beautifully developed deeper story of what parents owe children, what kind of intimacy is desirable, and how adult offspring cope with histories of unmet needs... The Position is better than its high concept...in the sophisticated, respectful way that it explores the six personalities of the Mellow family.

It's funny, wise and full of the richness and sadness of family life. ... hilarious and humane...The Wife was a terrific novel; but The Position is an even better one.... This is one of the best and most human books I've read all year.

Wolitzer's novel of sexual politics and family farce continues in the dark comic vein that she mined in "The Wife." [Her] comic timing never wavers, and she has an astute grasp of the way one generation's liberation inspires the next generation's pity.