The Uncoupling - Couverture rigide

"While zestfully exploring the nexus between complacency and desire, Wolitzer's hip, glib, impish scenario shrewdly examines the intricate connections between war and sex and perceptively illuminates the power of timeless literature."
-Booklist (starred) "Wolitzer's new novel, after The Ten-Year Nap and The Position, is another well-written and engrossing tale. And this one is definitely more of a tale than a story. In the town of Stellar Plains, NJ, a new, bohemian drama teacher arrives at the local high school. She selects as the school play Lysistrata, Aristophanes' comedy in which the women decide to stop having sex with their men to convince them to stop fighting in a war. As the actors rehearse, a cool wind of a spell passes through the women of Stellar Plains. It touches other teachers and students alike. The chill makes the women want to abstain from sex. So what happens when an entire town of women start to push away their men for no apparent reason? Otherwise happy couples break up. The novel flits from English teacher to gym teacher to the lead actress in the play and on and on. It reads and infects like a dreamy fairy tale with beautifully expressive and strangely enticing writing. VERDICT Wolitzer again tackles a complicated and provocative subject, female sexuality, with creativity and insight. Her fans and readers of women's fiction that's smart and snappy will want this."
-Library Journal (starred)

"Wolitzer makes it work, thanks to sharp characterizations and acute observations on everything from the digital generation gap to the accommodations made in a long marriage. . . . A risky strategy pays off for a smart author whose work both amuses and hits home."
-Kirkus

"A high-school performance of Lysistrata has a mysterious effect: The women of a New Jersey town become increasingly disinterested in sex with their partners. In the alternately hilarious and poignant events that follow, couples reexamine their relationships."
-Ms.

"Meg Wolitzer, like Tom Perrotta, is an author who makes you wonder why more people don't write perceptive, entertaining, unassuming novels about how and why ordinary people choose to make decisions about their lives....The Uncoupling is a novel that can't help but make you think about your own relationship--about what it consists of, what would be left if sex were taken away, how far you'd be prepared to go in order to keep it in your life somewhere, and so on."
-Nick Hornby, The Believer

"Wolitzer writes of a spell cast upon a town-but she superbly casts it upon the reader as well. This deftly written tale of bewildered women (and their men) is always surprising and always engaging, both funny and serious at the same time, a wonderful read."
-Elizabeth Strout, New York Times-bestselling author of Olive Kitteridge

"In this fiercely funny, playful and always tender novel, Meg Wolitzer glories in the drama and the magic of falling in and out of love... and bed. The Uncoupling is, happily, a very sexy fable about sexual ennui."
-Cathleen Schine, New York Times-bestselling author of The Three Weissmanns of Westport

'Enchanting from start to finish... thoughtful and touching and very funny' New York Times

One winter a strange, formidable wind blows into the bedrooms of Stellar Plains, New Jersey, and most particularly, into the hearts and loins of Dory and Robby Lang - the easy-going and popular high school teachers at Eleanor Roosevelt High school - whose comfortable lives are suddenly thrown into confusion when Dory finds herself inexplicably repelled by her husband's touch.

Back at school, in a curious case of life imitating art, the mysterious new drama teacher Fran Heller chooses as the end-of-term play Aristophanes' comedy Lysistrata, in which women withhold sexual privileges from their menfolk as a way to end the interminable Peloponnesian War. All across town, a quiet battle starts to take place between the sexes as caresses go unreciprocated, relationships come to abrupt and unexpected ends and marital issues suddenly explode to the surface.

Women across Stellar Plains continue to be claimed by the spell - from Bev Cutler, the overweight guidance counsellor who has 'let herself go', to Leanne Bannerjee, the sexy school psychologist who could have any man she wants - even the Langs' teenage daughter, Willa, is not left untouched - until everything comes to a climax on the first night of Lysistrata...