Menage
A Novel
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On a whim, trusting, childlike, gullible Mack McKay decides to install Zoltan, the once-famous migr writer he meets at a funeral, in his sprawling suburban New Jersey home in order to nurture the blocked author's next book. His real motive, however, is to give his frustrated wannabe writer wife, Heather, a literary companion and enliven his dull marriage. Zoltan is a caricature of creative sponging: lazy and overly dramatic. He talks up the novel he isn't writing, ruins his host's sleep, "borrows" diamond cuff links and bottles of wine, and robs the couple of valuable possessions and their lofty ideals. Heather draws all her validation from the men around her; she's suspicious to the point of paranoia and possessive, an annoying shrew who views Zoltan as a sexual playmate, bought and paid for by her husband. As Zoltan grows more independent, the McKays close ranks. While money and privilege has rendered the couple hopelessly na ve, the bottom-feeding Zoltan has the street smarts and scavenging skills to con them. In the end, Heather and Mack are violated and disappointed, but their initial expectations were never quite clear. Say this is satire, because it's hard to believe that such one-dimensional characters and hazy plot lines came from the same feminist author who wrote the classic Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen.
