Mrs. Fletcher

In this New York Times bestselling novel, Tom Perrotta, whom Time calls “the Steinbeck of suburbia,” delivers a penetrating and hilarious novel about sex, love, and identity on the frontlines of America’s culture wars.

Eve Fletcher is trying to figure out what comes next. A forty-six-year-old divorcee whose only child has just left for college, Eve is struggling to adjust to her empty nest when she gets a text message from an anonymous number: “U R my MILF!” Over the months that follow, that message comes to obsess Eve. While 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 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.

“Tom Perrotta is a truth-telling, unshowy chronicler of modern-day America” (TheNew York Times Book Review). Sharp, witty, and provocative, Mrs. Fletcher is a gentle but piercing satire from “the Jane Austen of 21st century sexual mores” (New York Newsday) about the big clarifying mistakes people can make when they’re no longer sure of who they are or where they belong.