Mrs. Fletcher
A Novel
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Now an HBO series starring Kathryn Hahn!
“Light, zingy, and laugh-out-loud funny” (People), the New York Times bestselling novel about sex, love, and identity as seen through the eyes of a middle-aged woman and her college freshman son.
A forty-six-year-old divorcee whose beloved only child has just left for college, Eve Fletcher is struggling to adjust to her empty nest. One night she receives a text from an anonymous number that says, “U R my MILF!” Over the months that follow, that message comes to obsess Eve. While leading her all-too-placid life—serving as Executive Director of the local senior center and taking a community college course on Gender and Society—Eve can’t curtail her own interest in a porn website that features the erotic exploits of ordinary, middle-aged women like herself. Before long, Eve’s online fixations begin to spill over into real life, revealing new romantic possibilities that threaten to upend her quiet suburban existence.
Meanwhile, miles away at the state college, Eve’s son Brendan—a jock and aspiring frat boy—discovers that his new campus isn’t nearly as welcoming to his hard-partying lifestyle as he had imagined. Only a few weeks into his freshman year, Brendan is floundering in a college environment that challenges his white-dude privilege and shames him for his outmoded, chauvinistic ideas of sex. As the New England autumn turns cold, both mother and son find themselves enmeshed in morally fraught situations that come to a head on one fateful November night.
“The sweetest and most charming novel about pornography addiction and the harrowing issues of sexual consent that you will probably ever read” (The New York Times Book Review), Mrs. Fletcher is a timeless examination of sexuality, identity, parenthood, and the big clarifying mistakes people can make when they’re no longer sure of who they are or where they belong. “Tom Perrotta’s latest might just be his best” (NPR).
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Tom Perrotta, the author of bestsellers like Election and Little Children, is known for his gimlet-eyed depictions of America’s societal ills. In Mrs. Fletcher, he focuses on the hyperconnected age’s potential for communication breakdown. When empty-nester Eve Fletcher receives a lewd compliment via an anonymous text, she falls down the Internet’s more unsavory rabbit holes, becoming obsessed in a way that alters her perspective on everyday life. Meanwhile, her party-boy son is having an unexpectedly tough time at school. Perrotta’s deftly written, raunchy novel is touching and hilarious—and his sympathetic descriptions give even his characters’ major screw-ups emotional resonance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Divorced since her husband decamped years ago, 46-year-old Eve Fletcher is bereft when her son, Brendan, whom she has helicopter-parented, goes off to college. Receiving a shocking anonymous email "U r my MILF! Send me a naked pic!!" reawakens her sexual fantasies. Watching porn satisfies her for a while, but soon she's tempted to kiss her assistant at her job as director of a senior center. Then 17-year-old Julian, who was in Brendan's high school class, confesses that he has the hots for her. Eventually there is a session of three-way sex that leaves Eve (her given name can't be accidental) free to discover the sexual partner who will make her happy. Meanwhile, Brendan, who has considered college a chance to party and get wasted every night, while "trash-talking and playing video games'' receives some jolts to his self-satisfied ego and comes home to finish growing up. Perrotta (The Leftovers) covers the gamut of sexual issues in this made-for-TV comedy of errors: Brendan's former girlfriend rebels against being a sexual doormat; Brendan's roommate vows to stop sexually demeaning girls. Every character here exists in a state of sexual arousal, and the happy ending finds each of them in a satisfying relationship.
Customer Reviews
Pretty good, meh ending
I really really like a majority of this book. I loved a lot of the characters, they felt very real and relatable. The ending just felt very off putting to me.
Liberal social issues grandstanding as a story about a college kid and his mother
I downloaded the sample of this novel and was immediately drawn into what seemed
a thoughtful and introspective work of literature. The story chronicles the journey of a mother as she navigates an empty nest and her son who explores newfound freedom as a resident college freshman.
What began as an enticing glimpse into the process of letting go and moving forward in a new season of life, told with humor and insight, quickly devolved into vulgar language and raunchy sexual exploits. All this gratuitous filth was firmly ensconced into SJW characters espousing Perrotas liberal views on gender fluidity, socialism , racism, feminism and all the other social isms. The battering ram of that was this bate and switch trash was offensive. The issues might have been better received had he chosen to respectfully continue writing the thoughtful novel I thought I bought about a mother and her son navigating the empty nest terrain and its inherent plethora of nuances.
Fails In The End
Entertaining story and believable characters...a good beach read or airplane book. But the ending was totally disappointing and poorly crafted. It seemed like the author couldn’t decide how to end it and settled for a slapdash wrap up. This ruined the book for me and so I can’t really recommend it.