The ‘burbs get short shrift in American literature. Many of us live in suburbs, or in small towns that have the same feel as suburbs, but you’d be hard-pressed to find much fiction that does more than simply despise them. Meg Wolitzer understands both the attractions and the dangerous languor of suburbia. The Uncoupling is a gorgeously written hymn that manages to capture the charms these neighborhoods hold for their residents.
The story unfolds in Stellar Plains, N.J., around the staff and students of Eleanor Roosevelt High School, which grounded by the married English teachers Robby and Dory Lang. You either know or are part of a couple like the Langs: whip-smart, down-to-earth and admirably in love. When a new drama teacher, Fran Heller, arrives, she makes an unusual choice for the school play. She chooses Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata, in which the women of Greece stop having sex with men in order to stop a war. It’s just literature—but like Wolitzer’s work, much more. Soon the women of Stellar Plains find themselves compelled to stop sleeping with the men in their lives. The spell is cast.
Wolitzer’s novel is funny and keenly observant. She uses the fantastic to externalize internal states that admit no easy description. This makes her an ideal companion to Alta Ifland, a Santa Cruz resident whose new collection of short stories and surreal fables is titled Death-in-a-Box. Ifland’s wry, smart stories present the everyday as the absurd and the absurd as the stuff of everyday life.
Her Eastern European take on reality might make you think she’s Kafka’s little sister, and her ability to bend your mind and bring a smile to your face suggest that your next stop is The Ifland Zone. She’ll be joining Meg Wolitzer in conversation at Capitola Book Café for a surreal Saturday night soiree. You’ll arrive as one person, entering one bookstore—but it will be another who leaves, with a different bookstore behind you.
MEG WOLITZER reads from ‘The Unoupling’ and ALTA IFLAND reads from ‘Death-in-a-Box,’ followed by a discussion, on Saturday, April 9 at 6:30pm at Capitola Book Café, 1475 41st Ave., Capitola. Free.
