The Uncoupling

Book 59 of my 2016 Reading Challenge
read from July 14 - 23

The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer

Summary (via Goodreads)
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. 

My Opinion
I really like the author's writing and will definitely read her again but this particular book and concept didn't work for me.  It was bizarre just for the sake of being bizarre, there were some characters that were introduced and then just kind of left without any explanation or resolution, and I felt cheated by the ending.

This quote made me laugh.  It is too easy to embarrass a teenager! ""Willa made the vinaigrette," she said to the room, pointlessly, and her daughter looked at her with cold horror. It was as if Dory had said, "Now, Eli, here's an interesting fact: Willa got her first period the day she turned thirteen." Her remark was apparently inappropriate; she was inappropriate."

A Few Quotes from the Book
"But the spell had started to come over all of them, seizing them in their separate beds, changing them in an instant. Starting that night, and continuing for quite a while afterward, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped and the windows shook like crazy in their frames, and all over that town, you could hear the word "no"."

"That was how it happened. Dory Lang kept stopping her beloved husband night after night, until finally he no longer asked, and until what they'd had together and what they'd done all these years became something from the past, a lost piece of their joined life, a delicious meal they'd once eaten, and were possibly about to forget."