The Valley of Ennui
A bored mom and a bored son’s search for love and meaning
Eve Fletcher, the protagonist of best-selling author Tom Perrotta’s most recent novel, “Mrs. Fletcher,” is a staple of modern women’s fiction: a 40-something divorcee in search of herself.
Her existential angst is compounded by the empty-nest syndrome. Brendan, her only child, is leaving home to begin his freshman year of college.
Eve’s despair is palpable. She is not ready to face the world without the buffer of husband and child. Her old friends are boring, her job no longer fulfilling. She is in search of a new life and a new self.
Initially,Eve is a convincing, sympathetic heroine. She shows insight into the demise of her marriage and non-cliché self-awareness that, in the marital tango, her own missteps havecontributed to its downfall.
Eve acknowledges that the passivity and neglect she exhibited while allowing the marriage to falter may have had similar, harmful effects upon her son, allowing him to degenerate into a boorish, shallow but wounded party-boy.
One way Eve tries to restart her life is by enrolling in a gender awareness class that is taught by a transgender professor. Although she and several of her classmates have chosen the course at random, more interested in enhancing their social lives than exploring the topic, the author uses this class as a springboard for raising thoughtprovoking subjects such as whether gender is innate or learned, and for reflection upon society’s everchanginggender norms.
Women living in the 21st century “had all these different models of behavior jammed into their heads,” Eve reflects. “You could be a fifties housewife and a liberated professional woman, a committed feminist and a blushing bride, a fierce athlete and a submissive, needy girlfriend.”
Although there are far too many points of view on display for such a small cast of characters, Eve, her son, and their newfound friends frequently convey solid insights into realistic individual and societal problems experienced by people whose lives are in flux. Readers, especially those who have experienced similar personal upheaval, may respond empathetically.
Given this promising beginning, it is surprising that Eve turns to pornography to while away her eventless, unfulfilled life.
Andit is mystifying why Eve, her son and several of their acquaintances are permitted to devolve into people whose lives revolve around not much more than “will I or won’t I have sex with whoever casts an appealingglance my way.”
“Mrs. Fletcher” quickly morphs from an upmarket, book club-worthy tale to a novel whose characters flit from one sexual encounter to another.
The liaison descriptions range from PG-13 to the edge of soft-core porn. Yet, when after more than 200 pages of wishing and teasing, Eve’s crucial moment of sexual payoff finally arrives, it is completely lackluster and, at least for the reader, unfulfilling.
Even with the last half of the novel devoted more to hook-ups than plot or character development, Mr. Perrotta could have veered away from farce and redeemed this book by allowing his characters, and therefore his readers, to gain some wisdom from the various sexual shenanigans and gender-bending encounters.
But the final chapter of the novel is jarring: It takes place several months later and Eve’s friends, along with her new sexual appetites, have inexplicably drifted away into what almost feels like an editorially dictated demand for a conservative, happy ending
In the Bible, Eve falls from grace and her sons fare even worse. In Mr. Perrotta’s world, all’s well that ends very conventionally, and conveniently, well.