'Position': A tangled legacy of sexuality
'Position': A tangled legacy of sexuality
Orlando Sentinel (subscription), FL
Several recent novels and TV series have revisited the iconographic suburbs of the Johns (Cheever and Updike) to reveal that marriages can be unhappy there. People cheat! -- and not just dads but moms, too. Readers who fail to be stunned by this news might do well to check out Meg Wolitzer's sly, delicious seventh novel, The Position.
In all of her fiction, Wolitzer has shown a supple understanding of how parents try to balance the demands of their children with their own yearnings. Here she deepens that understanding, revealing the ways in which our sexuality and identity are braided with that of our parents -- and our siblings.
The novel's tantalizing premise: In 1975, between PTA meetings, suburbanites Paul and Roz Mellow collaborate on a book that celebrates their own lovemaking. The best seller's illustrations show the couple in the entire Kama Sutra catalog of sexual twists. Pleasuring: One Couple's Journey to Fulfillment leaves the four Mellow children warped forever. What's fascinating is that they're warped in such very different ways. The Position tracks the family for three decades, through Paul and Roz's divorce and remarriages, as all of the characters struggle to find love, and themselves.
The oldest Mellow offspring, Holly, is a recovering drug addict with a nursing baby and a stale marriage to a surgeon. The second-oldest, corporate whiz-kid Michael, suffers from sexual dysfunction as a result of antidepressants. Dashiell, the next-to-youngest, a Republican speechwriter, has just discovered he has Hodgkin's disease -- since he's gay, everyone assumes it's AIDS. Claudia, the baby of the family, isn't quite anything at all yet. "It was as though she was not fully baked, was still damp in the middle where you stuck in the toothpick to check for doneness."
Dashiell's diagnosis galvanizes the family, as does the news that a publisher wants to reissue a 30th-anniversary edition of Pleasuring (with hip new illustrations, of course). Roz, now a Skidmore professor, loves the idea, but Paul, still bitter though on his second remarriage, stonewalls the deal. Michael is dispatched to Florida to strong-arm him.
Read the rest ot the review of 'Position': A tangled legacy of sexuality.
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posted by Tom Jackson @ Tuesday, March 29, 2005
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