Mrs. Fletcher

One sentence synopsis... A suburban divorcée discovers new possibilities after her if-toxic-masculinity-were-a-person son leaves for college. .

Read it if you liked... I picked up ‘Mrs. Fletcher' because i just finished watching ‘The Leftovers' and wanted more Tom Perrotta... this is nothing like that. But it is great for fans of suburban stories with familiar characters and comic relief like ‘Goodbye Vitamin'. .

Dream casting... I saw the trailer for the HBO show before reading the book and therefore can not picture anyone but Kathryn Hahn as Eve Fletcher - and I wouldn't have it any other way.

This novel unfolds over a year of time for Eve, the titular Mrs. Fletcher, and the many people that orbit her life. In no particular order of importance, there is: Brendan her douchebag, college-aged son, Amanda her adventurous yet lonely coworker, Margo her transgender professor, and so on. The relationships and friendships span out farther to Brendan's girlfriends and friends, Eve's friends in her ‘Gender and Society' class (which Margo teaches), and the complex orbital dance is revealed the farther along the novel is narrated by these various characters, all told in close third-person except for Brendan, who narrates weirdly enough in first-person.

Where the novel excels is the voyeuristic way the various narratives reveal that, even when they all get to know each other or reveal what they already know about their friends and families, they really don't know them as well as they think they do. For instance, Eve doesn't know just how misogynistic her son really is or the depths of his narcissism. Her idea of him is as outdated as his love for Teenage Ninja Turtles. But in the same way that people-watching fascinates some people, the unfiltered view into these characters lives–sometimes sexy, sometimes intimately confessional–is enthralling at times.

But the novel's strength is also its weakness, being too concerned about their internal lives and less concerned about serving the overall story or plot, or lack thereof. A unified plot is nonexistent and none of the characters experience any transgressions or difficulties to overcome worth cheering for. If you're hoping for high-risk stakes or difficult dilemmas to transcend, then you will be sorely disappointed. Ultimately, it's their first-world problems that you will be ruminating. In fact, the ‘big reveal' Eve explains in the final chapter that is supposed to illuminate the relevance of a sext message at the beginning of the novel–the one where an unknown sender calls her a MILF–is so groan-inducing that it's not worth even revealing here in this review. It's like a rom-com movie joke worthy of being left on the editing room floor.

Perrotta excels when the characters examine their hopes and dreams and debate the methods in which they want to escape the ways their lives have been compartmentalized, to the detriment of their hearts and souls. The dialogue and conversations are very realistic and utterly fascinating. If you enjoy living within the lives of others (and I admit, I do when reading fiction), then you will enjoy this novel. I did enjoy listening to these characters tell me about their lives. If you are hoping for a fascinating story with an intricate plot, then look somewhere else. I wished for more–story-wise–and was left wanting more from this novel.

I would give this novel 3 1/2 stars, if possible.