Now an HBO series starring Kathryn Hahn!
“Light, zingy, and laugh-out-loud funny” (People), the New York Times bestselling novel about sex, love, and identity as seen through the eyes of a middle-aged woman and her college freshman son.
A forty-six-year-old divorcee whose beloved only child has just left for college, Eve Fletcher is struggling to adjust to her empty nest. One night she receives a text from an anonymous number that says, “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 and taking a community college course on Gender and Society—Eve can’t curtail her own interest in a porn website that 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.
“The sweetest and most charming novel about pornography addiction and the harrowing issues of sexual consent that you will probably ever read” (The New York Times Book Review), Mrs. Fletcher is a timeless examination of sexuality, identity, parenthood, and the big clarifying mistakes people can make when they’re no longer sure of who they are or where they belong. “Tom Perrotta’s latest might just be his best” (NPR).
PRAISE FOR TOM PERROTTA:
“Tom Perrotta is a truth-telling, unshowy chronicler of modern-day America."
—New York Times Book Review
"Tom Perrotta writes with a satirist's ear and the heart of a romantic."
—Jennifer Egan
"Perrotta is that rare combination: a satirist with heart…Those who haven't curled up on the couch with this writer's books are missing a very great pleasure."
—Seattle Times
“He's the Steinbeck of suburbia.”
—Time
"Our Balzac of the burbs."
—Chicago Sun Times
"An American Chekov."
—New York Times Book Review
"...Prose so affable that the pages keep turning without hesitation. With Perrotta at the controls, you buy the set-up and sit back as he takes off.”
—Chicago Sun Times
"Tom Perrotta has to be considered one of our true genius satirists."
—Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River
"Perrotta [is] funny and deeply touching... A writer who's here for the long haul."
—Tobias Wolff
