cover image Mrs. Fletcher

Mrs. Fletcher

Tom Perrotta. Scribner, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-1-5011-4402-8

Divorced since her husband decamped years ago, 46-year-old Eve Fletcher is bereft when her son, Brendan, whom she has helicopter-parented, goes off to college. Receiving a shocking anonymous email—“U r my MILF! Send me a naked pic!!”—reawakens her sexual fantasies. Watching porn satisfies her for a while, but soon she’s tempted to kiss her assistant at her job as director of a senior center. Then 17-year-old Julian, who was in Brendan’s high school class, confesses that he has the hots for her. Eventually there is a session of three-way sex that leaves Eve (her given name can’t be accidental) free to discover the sexual partner who will make her happy. Meanwhile, Brendan, who has considered college a chance to party and get wasted every night, while “trash-talking and playing video games’’ receives some jolts to his self-satisfied ego and comes home to finish growing up. Perrotta (The Leftovers) covers the gamut of sexual issues in this made-for-TV comedy of errors: Brendan’s former girlfriend rebels against being a sexual doormat; Brendan’s roommate vows to stop sexually demeaning girls. Every character here exists in a state of sexual arousal, and the happy ending finds each of them in a satisfying relationship. (Aug.)