Stephen McCauley

Immensely enjoyable and strangely apropos for me as something so similar has happened in my own family, with my brother and his ex-wife, so that it was almost eerie to read about the two of main characters, the ex-es, deciding to share a property. It's somewhat courageous too, as McCauley is willing to blur the lines between what relationships are all about, say, maybe you only want to have sex with one gender or the other, but really you prefer your closest friends be the other, and, maybe show more you would even prefer to live with your closest friend not the people you have sex with. We tend to want everything so neat and tidy and it isn't. Plenty else is going on, issues with the adolescent daughter of a second marriage, for example, and McCauley isn't aiming for great literary heights (or depths, or whatever) but he has his finger on the pulse of the current moment. Charming and fun and in an in-between place of not hard to read but not shallow either. **** show less

We follow three members of a family, each at a moment of crisis.

Dorothy has spent thirty years bouncing from one potential career to another, all of them eventually fizzling out. Now she's tied herself to a self-help author, with whom she plans to open a wellness/retreat center in Woodstock, New York. Yes, that Woodstock, and Dorothy is the sort who can unironically tell people how excited she is to have gotten "back to the garden."

As part of her journey to personal bettermen, Dorothy has show more decided to finally tell her daughter Cecily the truth about her (Cecily's) father, a bombshell that Cecily may not have time to deal with right now. She's a college professor, currently on leave while she waits for the final report of an investigation into sexual harassment charges brought against her by a student.

As they always have, both Dorothy and Cecily turn for support to Tom, who is Dorothy's brother and Cecily's uncle. He's an architect facing both personal and professional chaos: His boyfriend has just walked out, and a client has cancelled plans to build the project that he hoped would be the climax of his career. That cancellation may push him into an unwanted early retirement.

This sort of family/relationship drama is comfortable territory for McCauley. The tone is lightly comic, filled with wry observations and witty dialogue. Elinor Lipman would be a good comparison, though McCauley's humor is gentler and less rollicking.

This novel feels a bit more aimless than normal for McCauley. The plotlines never quite take off; the coincidental connections among the characters feel more unlikely, more strained than usual. And one major plotline is left dangling at the end, annoyingly unresolved.

So this isn't McCauley at his very best. But his strengths -- the precision of his character sketches, the sharpness of the dialogue, the crisp social observations -- are sufficiently present to make the novel a pleasant read, if not a truly memorable one. show less

How many out-loud guffaws = hilarious? I heard the author at a reading and he had the audience in his palm, and I knew him from his breakout novel, The Object Of My Affection. This one is set in Rockport/Gloucester, MA and San Francisco, and there's a bunch of enjoyable real estate porn happening on each coast. David, the protagonist, is summoned from West to East to rescue his former wife Julie from her second ex-husband, who is horrible, and who is trying to wrest their rundown Victorian show more away from her so he can fund a renovation of his awful restaurant. David's coming out ended his marriage to Julie decades earlier, and he's also a college counselor, the perfect person to help out Julie's daughter Mandy - not Amanda, but yes, Mandy, as in Barry Manilow - thanks, second ex-husband. Julie smokes too much weed and cannot get motivated to pull herself out of her various dilemmas, and Mandy is heading down a dangerous path with a creepy older man. David narrates most of the novel, and he's such a bright and shining angel of a man - dumped by his lover for a younger man, and on the verge of having his longtime cheap San Francisco rental bought out from under him by that very same lover. He's a quivering mass of mess on the inside, but he's able to spread calm winningly all around him. The twist at the end is a bit silly but does not ruin the fun of the Sedaris-ness of McCauley's quips and raging self-doubt. It's the type of book that lures you to a bed, chaise lounge, or hammock, forsaking all else until you’re done.

Quotes: "It was similar to her sureness that she understood the specifics of the civil war in Syria - yes, but one pointed question and it all unraveled."

"She and her husband were wine connoisseurs, which is to say, incipient alcoholics with money."

"I know you well enough to know you wouldn't say that unless you didn't mean it."

"The role of the person who's left a relationship is to show that he still cares and feels fondly for the person he abandoned, while the role of the abandoned is to show that he has no feelings whatsoever."

"Amira had a nickname for the downtown of Beauport: "The Horror Of Little Shops."

"Misery does love company, but no one likes to have theirs trumped." show less

My Ex-Life by Stephen McCauley started out almost laugh-out-loud funny, but then happily it settled down into a marvelously written, snarky, sarcastic, still laugh-out-loud-funny-moments glimpse into people’s lives and how they respond to some of life’s challenges and turning points. Readers that don’t like social commentary in their books or don’t approve of the lifestyle choices the characters made in the past and make now may be quick to dislike this book, but they should give it show more a chance. It is well worth it. Like it or not, the world is a varied, wild place and these main characters are part of it, and, Stephen McCauley does an absolutely amazing job of describing them and the current events in their lives.

Although in my “real life” I am not particularly like any of the main characters, I could feel their emotions, their loyalty, their love, their pain, their trust, and their fear of making bad decisions that will stick with them the rest of their lives. Even though the relationships and situations may be unique, it’s still a second chance story, a story of people just looking to survive the crossroads they are at, do the right thing and be happy. The way the author describes how people act, how people react, why they do what they do, how they judge people and why was eerily accurate. I live in the greater San Francisco area and that, too, was like being there.

The story is very well-written and the pace was perfect. There were just enough little twists and turns that I couldn’t put it down because I was so engaged with the characters, wanting to see what would happen next and hoping things would all work out. And just enjoying the fantastic writing along the way.

This was the first book I have read by Stephen McCauley, but it will not be the last. The best way I can describe it is to say that it was just comfortable, easy to read and sprinkled with witty, spot-on observances, easy to empathize with the characters and feel anxious with them wondering if things can turn out all right or not.

Thanks to the publisher Flatiron Books for providing an early copy to me. I highly recommend it. show less