The UncouplingA Novel

A suburban high school becomes the setting for Greek comedy
In Meg Wolitzer’s latest novel, The Uncoupling, a cold wind blows through fictional Stellar Plains, New Jersey, chilling the women of the town, and suddenly everything changes. All of the women, young and old alike, lose their sexual desire, and reject the men in their lives. Wolitzer writes of one of the cursed women – a married woman in her 40s – reexamining her sexuality, “It was no longer effortless; it was full of effort, and now that she was aware of the effort, how could she ever ignore it again?”

In Wolitzer’s able hands, it is all, of course, funnier than it sounds. She is one of the wittiest writers in the game, and a singular voice in contemporary fiction, and every detail is dead-on. The local restaurant is called, perfectly, Peppercorns. The high school, where most of the action takes place, is the illustrious Eleanor Roosevelt High. There, two teachers argue over a can of Diet Splurge stolen from the staff refrigerator. “All of the teachers watched [the fight] with open interest…The gym teacher Ruth Winik, a big strong blonde, sleepless from a nursing infant and twin toddlers at home, backed away silently as if from the stirrings of a knife fight.”

The curse coincides with the high school’s rehearsals and production of Lysistrata�, the Greek comedy in which women stop having sex with men in order to end a war. Setting the book in that milieu of emerging sexuality was a sharp choice: the characters crackle with energy, from the high schoolers to the guidance counselors to the new, suspicious drama teacher in town. Every character is treated with compassion, and has an opportunity to grow. The curse is a lesson to be learned, but everyone, it seems, is paying attention in class.