The Position - Meg Wolitzer
by Zia ~ November 14th, 2005. Filed under: Books.
My parents, like every couple from the 70s, had a copy of The Joy of Sex in the drawer of their bedside table. We lived in Lagos at the time; I was seven and when they were out on their endless circuit of diplomatic cocktail parties and dinners, I used to sneak it out and look at the pictures. How traumatic would it have been if they actually wrote the book and posed for the pictures? Put it this way: I’d still be in therapy.
This situation is at the heart of Meg Wolitzer’s book The Position. It’s 1975 and Paul and Roz Mellow write a book, pose for the pictures, and casually stick it in the bookshelf in the den. Michael, the second oldest of their four children finds it, and makes his siblings look at it. What follows is the story of the entire Mellow family and the impact that book had.
Overall, I enjoyed this — but I have to say that it fell short of Wolitzer’s previous novel, The Wife. There are some absolutely stunning scenes, some fabulous characters. Wolitzer is a master of slow exposition. At the same time, it was a little self-conscious at times, a little overdone in the cracks between her amazing characters and the lives they lead.
On a side note that I feel compelled to add: One of my pet peeves is when a writer replaces the stalwart, utilitarian word “because” in favor of a floating, ethereal “for” — and she does so consistently, almost dogmatically. To my ears, it ends up sounding amateurish, which is a shame because she is so obviously not.