3.0
Menage
ByPublisher Description
Heather and Mack McKay seem to have it all: wealth, a dream house in the suburbs, and two adorable children along with the nannies to raise them. But their marriage has lost its savor: she is a frustrated writer and he longs for a cultural trophy to hang on his belt.
During a chance encounter in LA, Mack invites exiled writer Zoltan Barbu—once lionized as a political hero, now becoming a has-been—to live with him and his wife in their luxurious home. The plan should provide Heather with literary companionship, Mack with cultural cachet, and Zoltan himself with a pastoral environment in which to overcome his writer’s block and produce a masterpiece.
Of course, as happens with triangles, complications arise—some hilarious, some sad—as the three players pursue a game that leads to shifting alliances and sexual misadventures. Shulman pokes fun at our modern malaise (why is having it all never enough?), even as she traces the ever-changing dynamics within a marriage. Ménage is a bravura performance from one of America’s most renowned feminist writers.
During a chance encounter in LA, Mack invites exiled writer Zoltan Barbu—once lionized as a political hero, now becoming a has-been—to live with him and his wife in their luxurious home. The plan should provide Heather with literary companionship, Mack with cultural cachet, and Zoltan himself with a pastoral environment in which to overcome his writer’s block and produce a masterpiece.
Of course, as happens with triangles, complications arise—some hilarious, some sad—as the three players pursue a game that leads to shifting alliances and sexual misadventures. Shulman pokes fun at our modern malaise (why is having it all never enough?), even as she traces the ever-changing dynamics within a marriage. Ménage is a bravura performance from one of America’s most renowned feminist writers.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesMenage Reviews
3.0
“I give this a 3.5. A page-turner filled with quirky characters. I would have liked more depth. The writing is good, a little better than passable. I would put this book in the category of easy read, good for a plane, a light book that keeps moving.”
“I read Menage as a Netgalley Advanced Reader Copy, and I’m not sure exactly what to rate it. It’s a book that left me sort of wondering… wondering why the characters acted as they did, why the author wrote this particular story, and why I read it at all.
Menage focuses on a wealthy husband and wife; he’s often away on business and seems to have frequent affairs while she stays home with the children in their lavish home, feeling alone and away from the things that she thought she wanted—the life of a writer in NYC. The husband, well-meaning, brings up a once-famous exiled writer to stay with them—a sort of writer’s retreat for him and a gift to his “wanna-be” writer wife. The wife spends most of the novel trying to seduce the houseguest, while he spends his time trying to avoid her and pretend to write—something he’s been unable to do because of all the “potentially dangerous situations” (i.e. women) who get in his way.
While Shulman sets up an interesting triangle here between her characters, the tension never fully developed between any of the characters. The husband and wife have a reasonably good relationship even though neither is apparently satisfied in their marriage. The husband and writer seem to be respectful of each other—a the husband’s role bordering somewhere between patron and friend. The children are practically nonexistent. And the wife just seems lost. Since none of the characters seem to be developed fully, it’s hard to imagine them finding fulfillment in the triangle relationship either.
This book was certainly a “high-brow” piece of fiction with focus on intellectual ideas like socio-economic class and politics, but the themes of identity and perhaps even maturation needed more work for me to appreciate these characters and their unusual circumstances.”
About Alix Kates Shulman
Alix Kates Shulman is the author of the feminist classic Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen and three other novels; two previous memoirs, including the award-winning Drinking the Rain; and two books on the political activist Emma Goldman. She lives in New York City.
Other books by Alix Kates Shulman
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