Menage

March 26, 2012
On a whim, trusting, childlike, gullible Mack McKay decides to install Zoltan, the once-famous émigré writer he meets at a funeral, in his sprawling suburban New Jersey home in order to nurture the blocked author’s next book. His real motive, however, is to give his frustrated wannabe writer wife, Heather, a literary companion and enliven his dull marriage. Zoltan is a caricature of creative sponging: lazy and overly dramatic. He talks up the novel he isn’t writing, ruins his host’s sleep, “borrows” diamond cuff links and bottles of wine, and robs the couple of valuable possessions and their lofty ideals. Heather draws all her validation from the men around her; she’s suspicious to the point of paranoia and possessive, an annoying shrew who views Zoltan as a sexual playmate, bought and paid for by her husband. As Zoltan grows more independent, the McKays close ranks. While money and privilege has rendered the couple hopelessly naïve, the bottom-feeding Zoltan has the street smarts and scavenging skills to con them. In the end, Heather and Mack are violated and disappointed, but their initial expectations were never quite clear. Say this is satire, because it’s hard to believe that such one-dimensional characters and hazy plot lines came from the same feminist author who wrote the classic Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen.

April 1, 2012
A surprisingly tart little literary satire from Shulman, whose long career includes a feminist classic (Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, 1972), biographies of Emma Goldman, children's books and affectionate memoirs. At 36, Mack McKay has made a ton of money with a hugely successful career as a developer. He has an airplane and a growing art collection in his one-of-a-kind mansion in New Jersey. But he senses his marriage to Heather, whom he met when they were students at Yale, has gone stale. He still adores Heather but is spending more and more time in Los Angeles wining and dining a hottie named Maja. Meanwhile Heather has put her literary ambitions on hold to raise their two children in the suburbs, with the help of nannies of course. Mack senses Heather's resentment, although not her sexual paranoia concerning Mack and Maja--an affair that is never going to happen, especially once Maja commits suicide. At her funeral, Mack meets Maja's actual lover, dashingly handsome if aging Zoltan Barbu, whose book Mack meant to return to Maja before her untimely demise. Exiled from an unnamed Eastern European nation and championed by the likes of Susan Sontag, Zolton was once a literary cause celebre but now is broke, suffering from writer's block and about to be evicted from his apartment. Nevertheless he works his charm on Mack, who invites him back to the manse in New Jersey as a surprise for Heather. The agreement is that Zoltan will get a luxurious writer's refuge and Heather will be presented with an intellectual companion. Needless to say, Mack's plan goes awry. There is a clash of values, none of them noble though all self-justifying. Forget Shulman's reputation as a feminist author; spoiled, self-absorbed Heather is no more sympathetic than the two men who with her form an increasingly barbed triangle of mixed signals. And the liberal publishing establishment doesn't come off too well either. For a woman approaching 80, Shulman is delightfully wicked, verging on malevolent.

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March 1, 2012

This first novel in a great while from noted feminist writer Shulman explores the vacuous marriage of young, nouveau one-percenters Mack and Heather, a golden couple who met at Yale. Mack has since made a fortune in real estate and built a LEED-certified mansion in the New Jersey suburbs. Heather fancies herself an aspiring writer but feels marginalized at home with the children and nanny, nursing suspicions--not unfounded--that Mack is having affairs. In the novel's early scenes, written in an accelerated style reminiscent of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, Mack travels to L.A. for a dalliance and finds himself on the fringes of the cinema/literati crowd. He meets Zoltan Barbu, a washed-up Russian emigre author with serious writer's block, and invites him east to stay at their mansion. The novel downshifts to a witty domestic drama when Zoltan joins their household and Heather begins to throw herself at him. Materialists to the core, both she and Mack treat their houseguest like a possession, and he responds by pilfering from their wine cellar and jewelry drawers. VERDICT A lighthearted read with an urbane twist; many readers will enjoy.--Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2012
Shulman twirled into the book world with a witty and revolutionary feminist novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (1972), and eventually wrote actual memoirs, including To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed (2008). Now, in a delectably mischievous return to fiction, she detonates our brittle assumptions about marriage and creativity. Powerful, rich, bossy Mack meets the celebrated yet destitute emigre writer Zoltan in Los Angeles and, feeling guilty about leaving his wife, Heather, home alone so much, spontaneously invites Zoltan to come live at their New Jersey mansion. He expects dark, handsome, hungry Zoltan (of the molten eyes and chronic writer's block) to produce a masterpiece while also providing literary companionship for brainy, beautiful, well-read Heather, who keeps an impeccable home, writes an environmental column, and dreams of becoming a novelist. What sort of husband takes such a risk? Saucy Shulman orchestrates a brilliantly wry and entertaining comedy of desires as the, by turns, dire and hilarious dynamics of this odd menage heat up and illuminate the cracks in our fantasies about wealth, fame, sex, and art.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)