Customer Reviews

The Position: A Novel

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Michael Mellow, age thirteen, discovers a book called PLEASURING (complete with realistic illustrations), which features his parents graphically enjoying their sexuality. He immediately shares his discovery with his siblings --- Claudia, Dashiell and Holly, ages six to fifteen.

PLEASURING becomes a national sensation, with Roz and Paul Mellow appearing on television, on the covers of magazines, and on lecture tours. The book makes the Mellows wealthy, but it also changes the family forever.

Michael reflects, "No one ever thought about how it felt to be Paul and Roz Mellow's children ... how it felt to have your parents display their bodies, their preferences, their most private selves."

Thirty years later, the parents (who divorced two years after PLEASURING was released) argue over whether or not to reissue the book. Roz recruits Michael to persuade his father to allow the anniversary edition, so Michael travels to Florida to talk to Paul. The trip becomes a prolonged respite from Michael's own life, which has focused lately on the sexually detrimental side effects of his antidepressant.

Meanwhile, the grown Dashiell finds an ominous lump in his neck. His illness gives him time to reflect yet again on the fact that his parents' book spoke slightingly of homosexuality --- a fact that continues to wound him in spite of his satisfying life with his partner, Tom, and his work with a senatorial campaign staff.

Holly, the Mellows' oldest child, has long left the family, first for a life of transience and drugs and later for marriage and motherhood. When she married, her primary emotion was relief at no longer bearing the name Mellow or having to hear, "You're not related to the sex book Mellows?"

Their little sister, Claudia, has lived permanently with self-hatred, based mostly on her short thick body. Thirty years after first seeing her parents' sensational book, she is just embarking on her first real relationship.

Paul, the father, is on his third marriage yet still considers Roz to be his true wife. Nearly thirty years after their divorce, he continues to obsess on the ending of their marriage. His motive for refusing to agree to a re-release of PLEASURING is spite for Roz's decision to leave him.

Roz, now a professor teaching human sexuality to college students, remains attractive at 67. However, she continues to long for the acclaim she experienced when PLEASURING was first published.

Meg Wolitzer is a master storyteller. In her hands, the lives of these six people are realistically interwoven and absolutely fascinating. A subtle mystery --- how exactly did the Mellow marriage end? --- threads through the plot. The answer manages to be truly surprising despite abundant clues. I highly recommend this intelligent and thought-provoking work, which offers readers subtle resolution and hope.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon

The "position" refers to a unique sexual position, among many others, discovered by Paul and Roz Mellow and incorporated into their how-to sexual book published in the mid-1970s. One might imagine that the author intends to comment on the opening of American society to taboo subjects, but not so. Her focus is on the impacts and fragility of families. She follows all six members of the Mellow family beginning at the time of publication, and then leapfrogs forward by some 25 yrs with pertinent details of the intervening years being injected at propitious times. The premise seems to be that the discovery of their parent's book by the children, Holly, Michael, Dashiell, and Claudia, was a life transforming event. But that possibility really does not resonate compared to the impact that the divorce of Roz and Paul had on the Mellow children, sending them careening in all directions, with resolution taking years.

The book is concerned mostly with adjustments to life and self-discovery. In following each of the family members, the author offers often incisive commentary on coping with family, self-doubts, expectations, sexuality, modernity, etc. The new difficulties introduced into their lives that must be dealt with are the pending reissue of the how-to sex book and the discovery of Hodgkin's disease in Dashiell.

As has been noted by others, the book is not a taut examination of a situation or a life. It is mostly shifting commentary on members of a family, as they have gone their separate ways, who are somewhat forced, either through circumstances or guilt, to maintain some connection. The author does not leave most of the characters adrift; she suggests that the resolution of difficulties is possible for those open to possibilities. An interesting read.

Meg Wolitzer's novel, "The Position" includes a plot so richly layered and interesting, on can doubt that it consists of this novelist's best work to date. "The Position" revolves around the family of the Mellows, suburbanites who, in the middle of the 70's, write a sex manual where they serve as the models for the paintings. While the manual takes off, making the family wealthy and the parents famous, at home things change. One evening the Mellows four children, ages 7-15 find and read the manual. This moment turns into the seminal moment of their lives, the one which changes everything.

After this initial event, the novel picks up in the present day, examining how the aftershocks of that day continue to reverberate in the each family member's life. Deftly using rotating perspective, Wolitzer shows us the family from each member's perspective. She also takes the opportunity to cover a great many modern subjects, from internet startups, to Viagra, to the war of Iraq, dealing with each in an interesting and engaging manner.

To her credit, Wolitzer's characters never turn trite, and while the occasional clichés creep in here and there, this draw back does very little to lessen the novel's engaging flow. To a certain degree the author returns to the subject of her previous novel "The Wife," particularly as it relates to a wife who is misunderstood and whose depth is underappreciated by her spouse. This novel, however, benefits from deeper characters and also for Wolitzer's use of humor, something that previous work lacked. Indeed, more than a few scenes here provoke a hearty chuckle.

Over all, readers will enjoy this work and be converted to Wolitzer fan's in the process. I have little doubt that, come the summer reading season, a paperback addition will find a welcome place in many a beach bag.

The book should get five stars for the nostalgia factor alone!!! Growing up in the seventies has ever been more unglamorously or accurately depicted as in Meg Wolitzers brilliant, funny, and touching saga of the Mellow family. Paul and Roz Mellow write a book akin to 'The Joy Of Sex' which they end up being the models for. The book becomes a massive bestseller, and changes their lives. However one evening the children pore over the pages of the book together, and witness their parents in poses that one never hopes or could even imagine their parents being in. The shock waves from this reverberates into each of their adult lives. I fell in love with these characters. They were all so real and so identifiable, you can't help see parts of your own family in theirs. I also found the book hard to put down, which is always, to me anyway, the sign of a really great book.

The premise of this sometimes delightful book is certainly unique. I'll spare you the details, partly because I'm feeling lazy tonight, but also because other reviewers have done an admirable job of covering the basics. While reading this, I felt a wave of nostalgia (much better than waves of nausea I must say) for the innocence of the 70's - a time when kids had NO clue what went on behind the doors of their parents' bedrooms (thank God). The Mellow children could have been among the clueless, except they accidentally discovered a best-selling book their parents had created and published......and even posed for (imagine the shock here folks; remember, this was the 70's). The story then skips ahead so we get the privilege of seeing just how these kids turned out. You guessed it, they're all slightly dysfunctional (although so am I.......and my parents certainly didn't write a how-to book about sex). This was an interesting read and Wolitzer's writing boasts a quirky sense of humor. The adult children (is that an oxymoron?) were a bit one-dimensional and, at times, painfully odd. But all in all, I would recommend this book, just not to my mother.

This book has such an amazing premise. What happens to the children of parents who write a sex-tell-all/instruction-guide (think The Joy of Sex) after they discover The Book? What happens after their "so in love" parents get divorced? In 1975, the Mellow parents, Paul and Roz, write a book that celebrates their love, and their love-making. The international bestseller features the Mellows in various poses straight from the Kama Sutra in all their naked glory; including the Position they created themselves. Holly, 15, Michael, 13, Dashiell, 8, and Claudia 6, all sit down one afternoon after Michael finds The Book. And the discovery of The Book leaves the four young Mellows changed forever.

What is interesting is how it changes them all in such different ways. This is a fascinating look at how sex, love, divorce, and marriage can effect the oldest and the youngest in such varied ways. At first, I didn't think I was going to like this book, but as I continued, I became to empathize with the characters and even grew to like them. Wolitzer writes with a deft hand, giving her characters sympathy but not becoming so over handed that it grates the nerves. No sentence out of place, no plot unturned, this book is highly recommended.

Meg Wolitzer's been steadily building strength over the course of her career, and I thought she'd really peaked with The Wife -- until I picked up this book. The narrative is so assured, and laugh out loud funny, that it's impossible to put down. With a steady hand she shifts point of view chapter by chapter, as if passing a relay baton from character to character, painting a complex and complete picture of one colorful family then (in the 1970s) and now, until the very end when The Position becomes more than just the portrait of one family or an era (or a sex act!). It's a crazy, beautiful meditation on how each of us, with our own unique dysfunctions, finds happiness.

I had never heard of Meg Worlitzer until driving home and listening to Fresh Air on NPR during the course of an interview on this new work, 'The Position'. Afterwards I ran to buy a copy and I have been switched on ever since page 1. I am electrified.

Meg Worlitzer is truly gifted at creating a mental image with prose. Places take on atmosphere, people pop from the pages as if to say 'Here I am. Like what I'm wearing?', neighborhoods bustle, streets are named. Her ability to capture the timelessness of being human and her keen insight into family as well as youth serves this work of fiction well. She is able to tenderly broach a few taboos without it becoming a work of grotesque pornography. Her views on the phantom that is family, the detritus that it leaves, the wrecking ball family sometimes becomes is captivating.

'The Position' is one of those works that came along as if carried by the wind to whack me upside my carrion filled head with something new and bloody. It is good meat and I am more than pleased to devour the rest of it. The remnants I will bury for a time when my offspring need a good meal themselves.

The time was the mid-seventies. Paul and Roz Mellow lived in a suburb called Wontaucket, and on a "normal" weekend, their four children are spending the day alone while their parents are off giving a lecture.

The second oldest child, Michael, discovers the mysterious tome on a top shelf, bookended by something innocuous, but he is curious. Something about the way it seems almost hidden....

From that point on, the story unfolds as the children discover what the book entails and secretly share its contents upstairs on the "children's floor." The children are Holly, the oldest; Michael; Dashiell and Claudia.

Their lives will never be the same again.

When Paul and Roz first met, he was studying psychoanalysis and Roz was his patient. They broke their first rules by getting involved with each other, which resulted in Paul's removal from the program. Writing a bestselling "Joy of Sex" type book was not something they actually planned to do, and they were unprepared for the rousing success of this book...and surprised, somewhat, by how the book ultimately changed the shape of their lives.

The story is really about what happens after the book's publication. How the family comes apart at some point, when Roz falls in love with someone else. In the thirty years after the book, we glimpse moments in the children's complicated lives, with their conflicts and issues; we see the parents move on individually and then with other partners; and then, we watch and wonder when a publisher wants to reissue the book. That is when Michael goes to Florida (at his mother's request) to try to persuade the reluctant Paul to agree--for Paul has been against the idea and is still bitter about the divorce.

The author's portrayal of each of the characters, with their past and present moments, reveals how each of them struggle with the legacy of the book. Of all the children, Holly is the remote one, living in LA and refusing to share in any of the family gatherings. During her youth, we saw her submerse herself in drugs; now she cocoons with her husband and child.

Claudia has always felt inferior in many ways. Not pretty enough or talented enough, even though this is an incorrect appraisal. Dashiell comes to terms early with his homosexuality, and seems the happiest of the four children. Michael is successful, but is struggling with depression; an antidepressant he takes has negative sexual side effects.

In the end, there are celebratory moments after the second launch of the book, and everyone (except Holly) gathers for the occasion. In some ways, each family member has finally come to terms with the book--at last.

But what lingering foreshadowing hovers over each of them, even as they celebrate? What unexpected life-altering moments lie just ahead? Even as the story ended without answering some of these questions, there was a sense that somehow the characters would stumble along through whatever came next--because they had overcome the downside of their past.

The Position: A Novel was poignant and funny, with sharply drawn characters to which I could relate (except for Holly). Even though she is portrayed as the remote one, I believe that more could have been revealed about her. This omission left a cavernous hole in the canvas.

Coming of age in the seventies left its mark in various ways on those of us who had the opportunity (or curse!) to call that time our own. Wolitzer skillfully unlayers the facets of the sexual revolution and its impact on all who lived through it, and leaves the reader with the notion that family connections come in a variety of forms.

Four stars.

I started this book half-heartedly since I wasn't a huge fan of the author's previous "Surrender, Dorothy." To my surprise I found myself engrossed in the dysfunctional Mellow family and finished "The Position" in a few days. It has the same voyeuristic appeal of tell-all shows like 'Sex and the City.'

At times the book seemed overcrowded with characters. Some, like black sheep Holly, never fully come to light. Others, like Michael's girlfriend Thea, are given too much time... what was the point of that twist? I was reminded of certain ensemble films where there are so many good actors that they just seem to get in the way.

The end result of "The Position" is that it delivers far less than the sum of its parts. It is, however, a fun, light read, the equivalent of a popcorn flick. Those looking for a deeper examination of family dysfunction can read Franzen's "The Corrections."