The witty Tom Perrotta is back --- and this time he tackles many of the challenges of modern life for a divorced mother and her son: empty nests, autism, Facebook, gender issues, aging, and more. And then there's the matter of Mrs. Fletcher's foray into the world of online porn (so the book may not be for the very conservative reader). As with his other books, Mrs. Fletcher is filled with interesting secondary characters as well: the teen age skateboarder with a crush on Eve, the transgender college professor, the Indian college roommate with a heart, the assisted living bowling team, and more. I loved the dimensions and detail he brings to his characters and he perfectly captured the challenge of men going to Bikram Yoga classes. You'll laugh...you'll feel sad....and you'll be able to relate!

Thanks to Netgalley and Scribner for providing an advance copy of the book!

Just to be absolutely clear, Mrs Fletcher isn’t Mrs Robinson (the rapacious seducer from The Graduate). Although middle-aged Eve Fletcher does have sex – a three-way, in fact – with a boy the same age as her college student son Brendan, Eve is no manipulative cradle-snatcher. Moreover, she has boundaries, of a kind. Truthfully, sexually, Eve doesn’t quite know who she is. Does she want women or men, an age-appropriate partner or a younger one? In a novel stuffed with the sexual reference points of our era – MILFs, blow-jobs, inter-racial, transgender, porn, sexts, etc – it seems like the contemporary erotic world is both bursting with possibility and intimidatingly vast.

Perrotta, author of Little Children, The Leftovers and many other novels, is deemed the master of suburbia, a satirist who has made his fortune exploring the dramas of ordinary lives in the here and now. His new novel considers the many dilemmas of twenty-first-century intimacy from the perspective of two characters, Eve and her son, and opens as Brendan is leaving for college, an episode characteristically selfish and heedless in the teenager’s treatment not only of his mother but his hapless girlfriend Becca too. But Brendan, like many others, will discover that freshman year isn’t quite the orgy of booze and blow-jobs that he and his new roommate had been expecting. Brendan’s cloddish attitude to women will lead him into a humiliation so intense that it will stop him in his tracks.

Eve, meanwhile, is coping in characteristically practical fashion with empty nest syndrome. Embarking on a gender studies class, she slowly finds her circle of friends expanding in a rather surprising way. Eve’s libido has perked up recently too, not least through frequent visits to an online porn site, and soon she finds her life dotted with flirtations of daringly different kinds.

The developmental arcs undertaken by mother and son in worlds both modern and age-old are rich material for Perrotta’s humor and social observation. Bone-headed, jock-ish Brendan is the simpler, more comical fall-guy of the pair. Eve, something of an innocent in the garden, travels further and acts, predictably, with more maturity.

And the Mrs Robinson analogy has its continuing comparisons as Mrs Fletcher too wraps up with a wedding and another dilemma of choice. No banging on doors here, no breathless escape by public transport, no idolization of the young and beautiful. Instead, pragmatism rules. For all her exploratory forays, Mrs Fletcher is grounded; she isn’t, she decides, going to give up a bird – or a lover – in the hand.

My apologies but this was just really not my taste in books. I like humor, but the content was not appealing to me.

Eve Fletcher is trying to figure out what comes next. A forty-six-year-old divorcee whose beloved only child has just left for college, Eve is struggling to adjust to her empty nest when one night her phone lights up with a text message. Sent from an anonymous number, the mysterious sender tells Eve, “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 by day and taking a community college course on Gender and Society at night—Eve can’t curtail her own interest in a porn website called MILFateria.com, which 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.

My Thoughts: Mrs. Fletcher is a story that delves into the lives of ordinary people, situations that could happen to anyone, and I love how the author often takes us to places that we don’t expect to go.

At first I wasn’t that interested in what was happening to Brendan, the college son, who was kind of a jerk, IMO. But then I started to see his perspective, probably because he was the only first person narrator throughout the novel. Could some of his actions stem from inexperience? Was he really as crude as he seemed, or had he simply had poor role models?

Then there was Eve, the attractive mother who was still struggling after her divorce, and now had an empty nest to ponder. As she starts spreading her wings, finding new people and situations to explore, I just knew that where she was going might end up being regrettable. Could her new addiction to porn lead her down questionable pathways? I also enjoyed how a middle-aged woman like Eve was navigating dating life for the first time after her divorce via social networking.

Supporting characters like Margo, the transgender professor; Amanda, the young woman who worked for Eve at the Senior Center; and Julian Spitzer, the young guy who had been bullied by Brendan in high school…all kept my interest as I followed along with their adventures and how their lives connected with Eve. A 5 star read.

***An e-ARC came to me from the publisher via NetGalley.

I was entertained and drawn in by Perotta's slightly scandalous story of a suburban divorcee and her college-bound son. I couldn't help thinking that it would have been better if the author were more like the characters he was writing about. The authenticity of his feminist women, trans and queer people, and background characters of color, was lacking.

Without bringing up the whole Lionel Shriver debate again (and Bill has the best summary of that), I fear Tom Perrotta was writing about stuff that he probably should have left alone in his latest novel, Mrs Fletcher.

In brief, it’s the story of Eve Fletcher, divorced, mother to Brendan and director of a seniors centre. Note that Brendan is a sexist, homophobic jock, who has no intention of changing his party-hard ways as he begins college.

To fill her empty evenings, Eve begins a community college class, Gender Studies, and befriends its transgender professor, Margo Fairchild. Around the same time, Eve gets an anonymous text message referring to her as a MILF, which prompts her to spend a vast amount of time trawling MILF-related online porn and to have lesbian fantasies about a co-worker (obviously).

There were lots of bits in this story that made me feel uneasy* but I’ll pick my top three. Firstly, the inclusion of a transgender character and her ‘sexual awakening’ with a student was cheap. Margo was cast in a thoughtless and tacky way and lines such as “What bathroom do you use?” made me cringe.

Secondly, for a supposedly intelligent, modern woman, Eve lets her son get away with a lot of shit. She overhears Brendan calling his girlfriend a ‘slut’ and a ‘bitch’ and lets it slide. Meanwhile, she’s excelling in her gender studies class and keeping the porn-industry alive. Was I supposed to appreciate the irony? I didn’t.

…she needed to remind him that it was not okay to call your girlfriend a bitch, even if that was a word you used jokingly with your male friends, even if the girl in question claimed not to mind. And even if she really is one, Eve thought…

Thirdly, Brendan is an entitled shit – yes, Perrotta set him up as the classic frat-boy but there were NO REAL CONSEQUENCES for any of his idiotic and damaging behaviour. Although Perrotta tries to address Brendan’s general arsehole-ishness through a couple of sub-plots, there remained a whiff of ‘boys will be boys’ which, quite frankly, repulsed me.

It’s been a long time since I read any Perrotta and my memory of his stories are that they are generally sharp satires. Mrs Fletcher lacked wit and Perrotta’s attempt at a contemporary story-line came off as embarrassingly dated and ill-informed.

1.5/5 Sub-standard.

I received my copy of Mrs Fletcher from the publisher, Scribner, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

*not in a prudish way but uneasy about stereotypes and the way some groups were represented by single characters in this book.

I can always count on Tom Perrotta to make me think about topics in a different way. He does it again in this weird and wonderful story of a mother and son who find themselves entertaining new ideas and experimenting with new thoughts.

Eve, home alone after son, Brendan, goes away to college, begins to think about her social life and dating again. She doesn't know whether or not to act on her attractions. Brendan, is living it up at college but isn't really happy; he's flunking classes and abandoning friends. Where they both end up will probably surprise most readers.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC.

Tom Perrotta is a genius. I urge you, if you are skeptical about this book then to give it a try anyway. Unless you are easily offended. But, if this is not your typical genre, it doesn't matter. Perrotta's character development is insane. He has to be the best at it. My husband thinks Stephen King and I told him its because he hasn't experienced Perrotta. Eve is a 40 something divorcee who's only child is off to college. I wont say much about the plot because it doesn't matter. The author is in these peoples' heads and KNOWS them. Their thoughts, feelings, reactions, are (mostly) so real. Some was a little bit out there yeah, but it doesn't take away from the story. I highly enjoyed this book, it was such a satisfying read.

I have loved the early works of Tom Perrotta (The Wishbones, Election, Joe College and Little Children), maybe it was because I could relate to those books better. His recent stuff, just left me feeling underwhelmed. I didn't really care about the story or the characters. This isn't a bad book, but it just didn't grab my attention. If you like Perrotta you will probably like this book. If you fit into the demographic (middle aged woman) you may also like this book.

Eve Fletcher's son is college bound leaving her with an empty nest.  She divorced Brendan's father many years ago.  She likes her job but doesn't really love it.  She's lost touch with many of the friends she has made over the years, many of them related to her son's friends or mothers of children who shared the same activities as her son.  She signs up for a class, develops an appreciation for online porn, and tries to make friends both with a coworker and with her classmates.  Brendan also has his own storyline around his life and struggles at college.

Perrotta does an excellent job of inhabiting the minds of his different characters.  I found my favorite character was a minor character, Dr. Margo Fairchild, the instructor for Eve's night class, Gender and Society.  The problem I had with Eve and Brendan, is that while they were main characters their lives mostly meandered along.  Neither seemed to learn anything or go anywhere from start to finish in the book.  

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this novel.

I have to be honest it didn’t quite hit the mark for me. I could easily pontificate about Perrotta’s skill when it comes to social commentary and his ability to make readers squirm, because he hits the realism button far too often. However I do believe this is over-hyped and doesn’t live up to expectations.

It doesn’t take a master of social interactions to create this type of scenario. In fact I think a lot of it is gratuitous sexual gratification, perhaps for the shock factor. Shall we say, the ticking of en vogue boxes.

Even though the words sexual harassment were thrown in as a kind of jokey afterthought, and not taken seriously at all, Mrs Fletcher was definitely guilty of crossing the line. She was guilty of crossing quite a few of those. There seemed to be a really big focus on the son and his dubious actions, especially his very particular brand of misogyny, and yet none on the mother. There shouldn’t be distinction made between the two just because one of them is a middle-aged woman.

One could argue that her son knows no better because he wasn’t taught to treat women with respect. What is her excuse? Does she believe women aren’t held up to the same standards when it comes to crossing boundaries?

There was also a contradiction when it came to Mrs Fletcher being an over-protective mother, and yet that same person becomes so involved in her sexual fantasies that the plight of her son goes completely unnoticed.

Taking a step back I can see the intent or the point the author was striving to make, a tongue-in-cheek scathing eye-opener on the life a suburban housewife, but it wasn’t executed very well.
*Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my copy of Mrs Fletcher.*

Eve Fletcher is having a hard time with her newly-emptied nest. She enrolls in a local community college course, and this sets in motion a chain of events that spices up her life! The ending was a bit cliche, but I still loved every moment of this novel!

MRS. FLETCHER (2017)
By Tom Perrotta
Simon & Schuster, 320 pp.
★★ ½

I mused over Tom Perrotta's latest before attempting to write about it. Perrotta has never shied from unsettling themes, so I knew that Mrs. Fletcher wasn't going to be mannered. I pondered whether Mrs. Fletcher is a crib of turf he's already trod in Election (1998), Little Children (2004), and The Abstinence Teacher (2007); a Zeitgeist-capturing look at modern relationships; or just a trashy and clichéd pastiche of buzz topics. After careful rumination, I still can't decide.

If you're looking for wholesome, cast your gaze elsewhere. As fans of Perrotta's The Leftovers know, he's a sharp critic of the gap between the values Americans purport to hold and how they actually conduct their lives. There's a lot of sex in Mrs. Fletcher and quite a bit is degrading. All acts of fellatio seem to come with the recipient commanding, "Suck it bitch." You could read this as punctuating misogyny with a phallic exclamation point. You could also conclude it merely titillates in a prurient fashion. Without giving anything away, let me add that there are more deeply inappropriate relationships in this book than in Congress and the White House combined. Is that how it is in modern America, or is Perrotta just being as nasty as he wants to be? Similar split readings arise over other plot devices: Craigslist pickups, Internet porn, LGBTQIA themes, casual hookups, hazing, autism, the cougar phenomenon…. Do these add complicating depth to characters, or are they contrivances designed to make the novel seem more "relevant" and "contemporary?" (Terms in quotation marks because the definitions of such terms are up for grabs.)

The novel's epigraph is from the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus: "The way up and the way down is one and the same." Heraclitus was a foundational thinker in what is called the unity of opposites. In oversimplified terms, the idea is that we understand most concepts in relationship to its opposite(s)—love presupposes hate, good requires evil, etc. Do healthy relationships requite contemplation of unhealthy alternatives? Can contemplation take place without actual walks on the wild side?

The titular character is 46-year-old Eve Fletcher, a still attractive divorcee, but one aware that her life is at a crossroads. As the director of a senior center, Eve witnesses decay and death daily, and she has just dropped off her only child, Brendan, for his freshman year at Berkshire State University*, where she's perceived as ancient by other students. That point is driven home also by Brendan's disrespect and his infrequent texts that touch upon campus life. She even feels like a frump around Amanda Olney, her tattooed and energetic recreation director at the senior center. Eve's midlife funk is so deep that she's afraid to confront the fact that her son is a total asshole. Just to change the frame a bit, she signs up for a Gender and Society class at a community college in Haddington, Massachusetts (a fictional town that's clearly a Boston suburb). Her instructor is Margo—once Mark—Fairchild. Will this be a spark to make her rethink her rutted life, or will it confirm how out of touch she has become?

Perrotta divides the novel into five parts—The Beginning of the Great Whatever, The End of Reluctance, Gender and Society, The MILF, and Lucky Day—each one focusing on paths taken or forsaken by one or more of the book's major characters. Eve is the book's center, but hers is not the only point of view. Whatever else one makes of the book, Perrotta has plotted it well and has populated it with secondary characters that have stories and issues of their own. He even redeems cheaper prose with occasional gems, such as describing a Bikram yoga instructor as "a beautiful Asian man with the body of a gymnast and the soul of a drill sergeant."

And yet, there are aspects of the book that unsettle me in ways other than inherently creepy details. It began to stretch credulity that Eve could know so many people simultaneously making unwise decision. Nearly every male character —Brendan; Eve's ineffectual ex-husband, Ted; cranks at the senior center; a bartender who hits on patrons; and skateboarding Julian, a self-described PTSD high school survivor—is a jerk, a loser, pathetic or all three. Not that the women in the book specialize in Socratic logic either. Eve dances on the razor's edge so often that we wonder why she hasn't sliced herself in two. Perrotta seems to be leading us to consider that damaged individuals must hit bottom before they reverse course. Does he do so, or is his "Lucky Day" section more tacked on than organic? What would Heraclitus say?

I remain conflicted. The good news is that the book moves crisply, so you won't invest much time in checking it out for yourself. If, however, after 75 pages or so you find Mrs. Fletcher too tawdry, give up. It won't get any nicer for quite some time.

Rob Weir

Berkshire State is clearly modeled on UMass Amherst, especially its physical appearance, its campus activism, its ideological diversity, and its honors college. Other parts are stereotypes that died in the 1980s. In a recent ranking of top party schools, UMass ranked a mere 69th. Nor does anyone complain about the food—UMass cuisine ranks #1 in the nation!

Tom Perrotta is a talented writer with a distinctive voice. Like his other works, this one examines the foibles of white middle class America and its difficulties with finding love and making meaningful connections in a contemporary social culture that doesn't particularly value emotions or interior lives. Mrs. Fletcher is perhaps a bit less subtle in its comedy and satire than other Perrotta novels. The characters are on the pathetic side so don't expect to like or admire them. The structure here is solid, as is the plot. You'll likely care about what happens to the mother, Mrs. Fletcher, and college age son as they both learn how to live in this world. . Note that the novel has strong sexual content.

I was happy to receive an ARC of Mrs. Fletcher through Netgalley as I'm a huge fan of Tom Perrotta. For long time Perotta fans, this novel is nothing like his previous work. The setting is still the same (typical suburban town), but with a mostly female narrative and a very mature subject matter, Perotta has certainly stepped out of his comfort zone. I think it's mostly a success. He delves deep into character development and the story flows smoothly. Each character has their own set of flaws and I don't need to "like" every character, but I wish I had a character I could root for.
It was uncomfortable to read and sometimes I found it unnecessarily uncomfortable to read. Some parts seemed to be purely for shock value, which took away from my enjoyment. But the novel tackles a lot of difficult issues (some controversial) such as empty nest syndrome, divorce, transgender rights, infidelity, feminism, sexuality, etc.

I could not finish this book. It seemed like nothing happened but sex and drinking, or thinking about sex and drinking. Just not my cup of tea.

Mrs. Fletcher, Tom Perrotta's new novel, highlights a contemporary drama we call the culture wars. The title, as well as the narrative mirrors Virginia Woolf's famous novel about class and culture, Mrs. Dalloway. While we like to think a class structure doesn't exist in the USA, we have to acknowledge that there is certainly a struggle at this point in our history. Mrs. Fletcher, Eve, is a middle age woman who is educated with an M.A. in Social Work and works as an executive director at a senior center in her New England town. Eve's son, Brendan, is off to college. He was a popular athlete in high school and could have gone to many private schools but instead, chose a state school because he wanted to go to a 'party school.' Party is what college means to Brendan along with a major like economics which would fulfill his obligation to graduate with something with which he can get a good job and continue in the tradition of his family's values of success.

Eve and Brendan both struggle with the new chapters in their lives and the characters who enter their narrative represent each disparate group of Americans that call out for recognition and acceptance. Eve's event coordinator is a lovely young woman with tattoos in unhidden places that sends some of the elders up the wall. Brendan's roommate seems to be his people but after a while, he disappears only to reappear at a party with someone Brendan wouldn't have expected, in a million years.

Eve takes a writing seminar class at the local community college in Gender and Society which is taught by a transgender woman named Margo. The small group of students represent quite disparate types and Eve is thrilled that she has a new group of people to socialize with, even in class. She hopes there will be an opportunity to meet with them outside of class and you know what happens when you wish for something! Zap, you wish you didn't.

The entire novel goes from one amusing situation for Eve and Brendan to another and on the whole, I'd say we have a delightful update on the kind of novel Virginia Woolf thought her readers needed in 1925. Mrs. Fletcher is exactly what we need in 2017!

ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Scribner.

Eve Fletcher is a divorcee, an empty nester, a senior center executive. In this new season of life, she's eager to take classes, make new friends, and enjoy herself. She also happens to be in the throes of her own sexual revolution, and following along as this everywoman re-discovers herself is familiar, exciting, and sometimes pretty hot.

While this book was pretty much as described as far as plot goes, I've got to say I wasn't really expecting it to be a graphic as it was. I was impressed with the author's ability to communicate character growth and development, and did get to appreciate many of his protagonists, since this book was portrayed through the voices of many. And since I knew that sexuality and gender would be a theme throughout, I suppose I shouldn't have been put off by some of the more lurid details, but I wish Mr. Perotta could have found a way to convey some of these concepts without hitting me so hard over the head with the porn and vulgarity. I'm really not a prude, honest, but found myself almost embarrassed to be reading so many specific details pertaining to masturbation and porn sites. Some parts of this book made me long to take a cleansing shower, cuddle kittens or at least wash my hands thoroughly.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

Despite not liking my first Perrotta book too particularly well (The Leftovers - 3/5 stars), I decided to give this one a try as well. I ended up liking Mrs. Fletcher as much as I liked The Leftovers, which is disappointing because I really like Tom Perrotta's writing style. His stories, however, just aren't doing it for me. If you have a suggestion for another Perrotta book for me to try out, please feel free to mention it to me.

This book is told from the point of view of Eve, a 40-something divorcee and a recent empty-nester rediscovering her sexuality. Eve wants a different life now that she's alone, so we follow her as she tries to make a new life for herself by going for drinks and dinner alone, signing up for a college class (taught by an openly transgender woman named Margo Fairchild who was the only character I liked in this book) and meeting and hanging out with new people including a young man her son went to high school with named Julian Spitzer and a coworker of Eve's named Amanda.

This book is also told from the point of Brendan, Eve's son who is a freshman in college living in a dorm. When college doesn't turn out to be the constant party with his roommate Zack that Brenden assumed it would be, he started doing worse in his classes. After a shitty experience with an autism advocate named Amber, Brenden decides to quit college and return home in the middle of the night with no notice to his mother.

The book follows Brenden and Eve for less than a year until their paths cross again in an overly lackluster way. I feel like the end of the book came a little too quickly and Eve changed so fast that it didn't make sense to me. I was happy, however, that she and her son both found happiness even though I'm not sure exactly how it came to be.

This book feels a bit over-reaching to becoming all-inclusive with a transgender woman, people with different sexualities, people with severe depression, differently abled people (including Brenden's young step-brother with autism and a young woman in a wheelchair), many races of college students and so on.

ALL THAT BEING SAID- I picked up this book because it looked like a light trashy read for summer and it was exactly what I wanted. I would have hoped that the characters were at least a little more likable and had redeemable storylines, but I digress. This book was a quick read and some points were incredibly amusing. I will try another Perrotta book in the future and maybe have better luck next time.