The Position: A Novel [Paperback]

From the bestselling author ofThe Wife—Meg Wolitzer’s “hilariously moving, sharply written novel” (USA TODAY), hailed by critics and loved by readers worldwide, with its “dead-on observations about sex, marriage, and the family ties that strangle and bind” (Cleveland Plain Dealer).

Crackling with intelligence and humor,The Positionis the masterful story of one extraordinary family at the hilarious height of the sexual revolution—and through the thirty-year hangover that followed.

In 1975, Paul and Roz Mellow write a bestsellingJoy of Sex-type book that mortifies their four school-aged children and ultimately changes the shape of the family forever. Thirty years later, as the now dispersed family members argue over whether to reissue the book, we follow the complicated lives of each of the grown children and their conflicts in love, work, marriage, parenting, and, of course, sex—all shadowed by the indelible specter of their highly sexualized parents. Insightful, panoramic, and compulsively readable,The Positionis an American original.THE POSITION
Meg Wolitzer
Questions and Topics for Discussion
1. Why did Paul and Roz Mellow keep a copy ofPleasuringwhere they knew the children could, and most likely would, find it? Did they fully understand the consequences of how the book might affect their children, especially 6-year-old Claudia and 8-year-old Dashiell?
2. Roz had once read a line in a book that she'd never forgotten:Women have sex so they can talk, and men talk so they can have sex (240). Using examples from the story, discuss the different ways in which men and women view sex, relationships, and the ways in which the two intersect.
3. How does looking at the book -- and seeing their parents in this way -- impact each of the Mellow children? What do their reactions reveal about their individual personalities? When they're rel³.