Our Take
Meg Wolitzer has a gift for mining family dysfunction for both comedy and genuine pathos, and The Position is one of her sharpest examples of that balance. The premise, four adult siblings whose parents once wrote a bestselling illustrated sex manual, could easily tip into farce, but Wolitzer uses it as a lens for something richer: how children carry the weight of their parents' choices long after those choices stop being private. Fans of The Interestings will recognize Wolitzer's knack for tracking a group of characters across decades, watching ambition and disappointment reshape them in unexpected ways. There's also a kinship with Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections in how both authors use one eccentric family to interrogate broader anxieties about sex, success, and generational inheritance. Readers who enjoyed Ann Patchett's Commonwealth for its unsentimental look at blended and fractured families will find similar pleasures here. Wolitzer's prose is conversational and wry, never showy, which lets the emotional undercurrents sneak up on you. Each sibling gets distinct interior space, and none of them are let off easy, which keeps the novel from feeling tidy or moralistic. This one's for readers who like their family dramas funny but not light, and who don't mind a little discomfort along the way. If you've outgrown beach reads but still want something propulsive, start here.
