Newsletter

Reading lists

9 absorbing novels with an academic setting

Books-to-help-you-deal-with-imposter-syndrome_Nathalie-Lees_Hero-Desktop_Penguin

Best books to help you deal with imposter syndrome

The Wife

Discover the critically acclaimed novel behind Glenn Close’s Oscar nominated performance

The tie-in edition for the major motion picture starring Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce and Christian Slater

Meg Wolitzer is so funny and clever she should be bottled and sold as tonic

It’s funny, and it’s brilliant, and I press it on everyone I know

A triumph of tone and observation, The Wife is a blithe, brilliant take on sexual politics

With a great lightness of touch, Wolitzer's novel satirises American literary circles of the Seventies and Eighties and traces the generation of wives who poured their own creative energies into "stoking the fires" of their husbands' reputations

Already a classic... and I have no idea why its author remains so less well known than her US compatriots, Alison Lurie and Lorrie Moore

Meg Wolitzer is the author of several acclaimed novels: The Uncoupling (‘tingles with playfulness and wicked observation’ Independent); The Position (‘one of the best and most human books I’ve read all year’ Erica Wagner); The Ten-Year Nap (‘as incisive and pitiless and clear-eyed a chronicler of female-male tandems as Philip Roth or John Updike' Chicago Tribune) and, most recently, The Interestings. She is married with two sons and lives in New York City.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING GLENN CLOSE 
 
A husband. A wife. A secret. Behind any great man, there’s always a greater woman. 
 
Joe and Joan Castleman are on an aeroplane, 35,000 feet above the ocean. Joe is thinking about the prestigious literary prize he is about to receive and Joan is plotting how to leave him. For too long Joan has played the role of supportive wife, turning a blind eye to his misdemeanours, subjugating her own talents and quietly being the keystone of his success. 
 
 The Wife is an acerbic and astonishing take on a marriage from its public face to the private world behind closed doors. Wolitzer has masterfully created an expose of lives lived in partnership and the truth that behind the compromises, dedication and promise inherent in marriage there so often lies a secret... 
 
‘A triumph of tone and observation, The Wife is a blithe, brilliant take on sexual politics’ Lorrie Moore

The Position

'Funny, wise and full of the richness and sadness of family life' - The Times 
 
By the acclaimed author of The Wife - as hilarious and uncomfortable as the eponymous position, a sharp, funny, unexpected and compellingly readable novel about the effects of the sexual revolution (and a Joy of Sex type book) on one family.

The best novel I have read in years... a cast-iron masterpiece

Funny, moving and wise, The Position is a joy to read

Meg Wolitzer is a fine, funny and wise writer

Her writing is sympathetic, measured, gently ironic...an entertaining and persuasive novel about a family and its inevitable diffusion

What sets and keeps you reading is not the high concept about the sex book but the beautifully developed deeper story of what parents owe children...The tone is one of nuanced insight and observation, both sympathetic and worldly

Meg Wolitzer is the author of several acclaimed novels, including The Uncoupling (‘tingles with playfulness and wicked observation’ Independent), The Wife (‘has you howling with recognition’ Allison Pearson), The Position (‘one of the best and most human books I’ve read all year’ Erica Wagner) and The Ten-Year Nap (‘as incisive and pitiless and clear-eyed a chronicler of female-male tandems as Philip Roth or John Updike' Chicago Tribune). Most recently, The Interestings was a New York Times bestseller. She lives in New York City.

Everything changes for the four Mellow children the day they find a book called Pleasuring on the shelf. 
 
It is written by their liberal parents, features tasteful pastel illustrations of their lovemaking, and has become a runaway bestseller. Thirty years later the book is set to be reissued but the lives of the Mellow family are no longer the same: their children grapple with complicated 21st century problems and the iconic couple's perfect marriage has not run as smoothly as everyone has assumed...

The Interestings

A heartbreaking, panoramic tragicomedy and a big American novel from bestseller Meg Wolitzer

On a warm night in 1974, six teenagers meet at Spirit-in-the-Woods summer camp. They smoke, drink, talk and decide that they are, and will remain, the Interestings. 
 
Decades later, their lives have not unfolded equally. Jules has traded acting dreams for a more practical adulthood. Ethan’s animated creation has made him famous and wealthy. Ash, Jonah, Cathy and Goodman carry their own gifts, secrets, disappearances and losses. As chance and envy reshape the group, the intensity of adolescence gives way to the harder question of what friendship can survive. 
 
Generous and psychologically acute, The Interestings is an American coming-of-age novel like no other; exploring the intricacies of creativity, money and ambition when they come into contact with lifelong friendship. 
 
For readers looking for book club fiction with sweep and emotional intelligence, Meg Wolitzer follows the people we once wanted to become and the lives we actually make. 
 
‘A truly great novel about friendship, and how it deepens and changes over the years’ David Sedaris, author of Me Talk Pretty One Day

This is a wonderful book. Intelligent and subtle, it is exquisitely written with enormous warmth and depth of emotion… But what makes The Interestings exceptional is the precision and elegance of Wolitzer’s writing… This should be the novel to make Wolitzer a household name here too

Wolitzer is a writer of prodigious energy and detail, with the knack for comic-satirical perceptions of character and culture

A complex, cleverly interwoven analysis of the moment when the lives of six friends begin to unravel’

Wolitzer has a knack for homing in on the kind of pretension-puncturing details that can sum up a minor character in a single sentence

Meg Wolitzer writes fluently about the American Dream and whether you should surrender your goals to reality in this wonderful novel

I love Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings because it’s sprawling and beautifully written and it opens at a summer camp. It’s a truly great novel about friendship, and how it deepens and changes over the years

If you enjoy the introspective aspects of Virginia Woolf or the American modernity of Jennifer Egan, you’ll love this sweeping, tragicomic novel of ideas

One of those generation-defining America novels that tackles big historical issues

The wit, intelligence and deep feeling of Wolitzer’s writing are extraordinary and The Interestings brings her achievement, already so steadfast and remarkable, to an even higher level

Meg Wolitzer’s latest offering promises to be the epic novel of the summer

A wonderful novel, written with warmth and depth of emotion

This is an exhilarating, aerobatic, addictive novel

The dreamy, criss-crossing narrative proves Wolitzer one of America’s most ingenious and important writers

An engrossing look at life’s twists and turns

The wit, intelligence and deep feeling of Wolitzer’s writing are extraordinary and The Interestings brings her achievement, already so steadfast and remarkable, to an even higher level.

This is a wonderful book. Intelligent and subtle, it is exquisitely written with enormous warmth and depth of emotion… Wolitzer is an affectionate and clear-sighted observer of human nature

Meg Wolitzer proves brilliant at writing normal, unremarkable lives, investing them with just as much detailed attention and humane humour as the lives of the beautiful, the rich and the famous… [She] also pulls off an impressive balancing act, sometimes inhabiting the moment-to-moment present of her characters, and at others times writing with a droll hindsight

There are certain authors whose new book you look forward to as though you were about to catch up on news from an old friend. And there are authors whose new book you fall on greedily because you know it will be tartly delicious and satisfy a hunger you didn’t know you had till you read them for the first time. For me, Meg Wolitzer has long been in both of those categories… The Interestings is full of Wolitzer’s trademark pleasures. I love her fearlessness in tackling everything … She has a sly wit and verbal brio which can even make clinical depression entertaining

Meg Wolitzer is the author of several acclaimed novels, most recently The Uncoupling (‘tingles with playfulness and wicked observation’ Independent) and The Wife (‘has you howling with recognition’ Allison Pearson), The Position (‘one of the best and most human books I’ve read all year’ Erica Wagner) and The Ten-Year Nap (‘as incisive and pitiless and clear-eyed a chronicler of female-male tandems as Philip Roth or John Updike' Chicago Tribune). She is married with two sons and lives in New York City.

The Ten-Year Nap

'Think Sex and the City with less sex and more nappies' - Ladies First

What comes after chick-lit?  Mum-lit, perhaps - but tales of hyper-active kids, moribund marriages and the career opportunities that got away will seldom match Wolitzer's wit, bite and schmaltz-free sympathy

This one shouldn't be only for chicks. It's for everyone. It asks far-reaching questions about the place of women in society and within the family unit, but it asks also whether life has been fair to men

The latest novel from the excellent Meg Wolitzer presents four New York mothers emerging from a decade in babyland... a wonderful study of muddy equivocation, a hilarious yet compassionate examination of the primordial slime and the modern woman

Terrific... Wolitzer's novels have always been exemplars of the motto that the personal is political... [Offers] many pleasing, surprising contrasts

It made me think about a woman's eternal problem of balancing the love she has for her children with what to do when they finally leave home. A serious, meaty read

Her books have this peculiar knack of being both very funny and uncomfortable, and her dissection of marital relationships is second to none

Wolitzer is as precise and rigorous an observer of social status as Tom Wolfe; she is as incisive and pitiless and clear-eyed a chronicler of female-male tandems as Philip Roth or John Updike.

Wolitzer perfectly captures her women's resolve in the face of a dizzying array of conflicting loyalties.

Concerned mothers are talking about a new novel, The Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer

Her best novel to date... Writing with candour and humour, Wolitzer captures the neuroses of a rarefied mommy elite.

Wolitzer is wickedly, terrifically funny - a true delight

This might well make you see work in a new light

Smart and clever...Wolitzer could describe paint drying and make it funny, but there are hard questions posed in her portrait of these fortysomething urban females

Meg Wolitzer is the author of several acclaimed novels, The Wife ('has you howling with recognition' Allison Pearson), The Position ('one of the best and most human books I've read all year' Erica Wagner) and The Uncoupling. She is married with two sons and lives in New York City.

For a group of four New York friends, the past ten years have been defined by marriage and motherhood. 
 
Educated to believe that they and their generation would conquer the world, they nonetheless left high-powered jobs to stay at home with their babies. What was intended as a temporary time-out has turned into a decade. Now at forty, with their kids growing up, Amy, Jill, Roberta and Karen wake up to a life and a future that is not what they intended. Illicit affairs, money problems, issues with children and husbands all rear their heads, and the friends wonder if it's time for a change...

The Uncoupling

Tender yet wickedly intelligent summer reading from Anne Tyler's naughty little sister

A novel that tingles with playfulness and wicked observation

There are lots of sharp insights on the generation gap, the pseudo-intimacy generated by the internet, and American high-school life; Wolitzer displays perfect comic timing in her awkward chats between jocular teachers and mortified teens

Highly entertaining and a serious page-turner. Wolitzer's humour and language create a compelling read

The Uncoupling is wittily done, with an attention to the minutiae of lives worthy of John Updike

There aren’t many writers who manage to handle bedroom scenes as blithely as comic novelist Meg Wolitzer… In a novel that tingles with playfulness and laugh-out-loud observation, she poses questions about long-term intimacy and the death of desire

This is a gentle novel about gentle things...a delight to read

Thoughtful and touching, The Uncoupling is also very funny

Reminiscent of early Margaret Atwood, this is the poignant story of a spell that compels the women in a suburban town to refuse sex with their men

Her prose is elegant and her humour nicely pitched

Meg Wolitzer is the author of several acclaimed novels, most recently The Wife ('has you howling with recognition' Allison Pearson), The Position ('one of the best and most human books I've read all year' Erica Wagner) and The Ten-Year Nap ('wickedly, terrifically funny... a true delight' Independent). She is married with two sons and lives in New York City.

What if every woman in town suddenly went on strike? 
 
For the people of Stellar Plains, the staging of a new school production of an Athenian drama coincides with a mysterious cold wind that blows into houses and into hearts, stilling passion and cooling sheets. As the play moves into dress rehearsal and discontent simmers, opening night cannot come a moment too soon...

Meg Wolitzer

The Female Persuasion has gone straight into my library of favourite novels ever, on a shelf next to David Copperfield, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Lonesome Dove, and Love in a Time of Cholera

'The novel’s timeliness cannot be understated...tight but inclusive, and deserves to be placed on shelves alongside such ornate modern novels beginning in college as A Little Life, The Secret History and The Marriage Plot... But when all is said and done, Wolitzer is an infinitely capable creator of human identities that are as real as the type on this page, and her love of her characters shines more brightly than any agenda

The Female Persuasion is wonderfully dense and wise, a page-turner that succeeds both at character and ideas. It felt true to life

Deft and funny…trenchant, clever, displaying a pitch-perfect recollection of the idealism of early adulthood and what life subsequently does to undo it

From the very first page of any novel by Meg Wolitzer, you feel in safe hands. She is skilful and confident…she is exceptionally gifted in the neglected craft of plotting...like a modern-day Edith Wharton, she has an instinctive understanding that tragedy and comedy are different sides of the same coin... How could you fail to love such a writer?

sympathetically satirises this complicated landscape of contemporary feminism...warm and witty, and necessary...With affection and generosity, Wolitzer exposes the limits of power through a handful of well-meant lives and she leaves us uneasy. The sense that we may have smashed a glass ceiling, but now are standing in the shards, discreetly bleeding

No novelist I can think of has majored on the group portrait with quite such verve, wit and sympathy as Meg Wolitzer

Wolitzer is an astute observe of cultural nuance, particularly around gender and inequality

Wolitzer is an irresistibly charming novelist, a keen, affectionate examiner of society

An ambitious overview of the women's movement...her writing is peppered with wit and her send-up of various sacred cows is often funny

Ambitious...startlingly perceptive...full of Wolitzer's trademark wit and insight...strong enough to remind us that we can change the world, one woman at a time

There’s much more to admire here as the novel ponders friendship, love and parent-child relationships. But in the end, Wolitzer’s real gift to her readers is a story that feels both timeless and very much of the zeitgeist.

The Female Persuasion is…a gripping novel that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page

A remarkable study of how feminism has evolved over the last thirty years and what it means to be empowered in the 21st century.

Clever and entertaining...incisive without being acerbic, Wolitzer’s novel is unpredictably plotted, persuasively observed and often very funny

Begins with a campus assault and evolves into an exploration of intergenerational feminism, steeped in the cultural conversation of today… A deft portrayal of the complexity of human identity.

The textures of the world Wolitzer describes feel satisfyingly right… Wolitzer holds attention with her warm grasp of character and careful, probing working out of personality under the forces of time and trauma’

Meg Wolitzer bores into the barbed tangles of contemporary feminism with disarming charm… Captures the ambition and angst of growing up with warmth and wisdom in a book that’s at once searingly intelligent and gloriously light.

Meg Wolitzer's tale of feminism's generational differences is much richer than mere polemical tract

Bustling, large-hearted... The Female Persuasion discusses timely issues of feminism...but does so through fully realised characters

it deftly interweaves the political with the personal... clear and smart

[Woltizer is] interested in the complexities of being female… This is an unashamedly traditional novel of ideas, not afraid to boldly inhabit the moment we live in

A significant contribution to Wolitzer’s body of work

Wolitzer’s prose is direct and engaging… her characters feel alive and individual

My favourite book of the year… Wolitzer deserves more recognition: she is as talented a storyteller as Donna Tartt, as funny as Jonathan Franzen, but she has her own distinct brilliance

Financial Times, **FT Readers' Books of the Year**

The end will leave you simmering with impotent rage, which sounds about right for 2018

There’s lots to enjoy here – the plot is pacy and you’ll come to care and deeply invest in these characters through Wolitzer’s brilliantly sharp prose

-          Meg Wolitzer captures the zeitgeist like no one else

[W]arm and witty, and necessary… With affection and generosity, Wolitzer exposes the limits of power

** Selected by 8 National Newspapers as a Book of the Year ** 
 
 ** The New York Times Bestseller ** 
 
 ‘A page-turner that succeeds both at character and ideas’ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 
 
 A warm and immersive novel about ambition, power, women, friendship and finding your place in the world, from the bestselling author of The Wife and The Interestings. 
 
 Greer Kadetsky is a shy college student when she meets the person who will change her life. 
Faith Frank, an influential and glamorous figure from the women’s movement, inhabits a very different world to Greer’s. But after a chance encounter Faith singles Greer out and invites her into her life, leading her down a thrilling path as it winds towards and away from her meant-to-be love story with high school sweetheart Cory and the future she had always imagined. 
 
 Expansive and wise, compassionate and witty, The Female Persuasion is about the spark we all believe is flickering inside us, waiting to be seen and fanned by the right person at the right time.

Meg Wolitzer

Books by Meg Wolitzer

Articles featuring Meg Wolitzer

9 absorbing novels with an academic setting

Best books to help you deal with imposter syndrome

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter