The Pessimists by Bethany Ball

 

This novel follows the lives of three couples in a wealthy Connecticut town.  Trip and Virginia are a popular couple with one child.  But no one knows that Trip has become a survivalist with a basement full of guns or that Virginia has breast cancer and that she isn't treating it even though her mother died of the same disease. 

Richard and Margot have three boys.  Richard is Trip's best friend but has had a crush on Virginia for a while.  He majored in literature and Virginia wrote a published novel plus she is beautiful.  Margot is focused on whether to move her boys to the Petra school instead of the public schools they attend.  She also wants another child as they had a daughter who died of SIDS.

The last couple, Gunther and Rachel, are the newest ones to come to town.  Gunter is German and older than most of their circle.  Rachel is working from home in design but both find the town suffocating and wonder if they were too hasty in leaving the city.  Gunther starts out opposed to the Petra school but later becomes one of its leading advocates.

The Petra school is a focus point of the town.  It has strong ideas about how children should and shouldn't be taught.  It focuses on cooperation not competitiveness so sports are out as are academic pressure and competitions such as spelling bees.  In fact, in the lower grades children who already know how to read are pressured to not do so because it might make their peers feel badly.  As the year goes by, several of the parents start to wonder if anything is actually being taught there except how to feel good about yourself.

The couples are entering middle age and facing issues such as the waning of sexual desire for each other, worries about money, fading of the love that brought them together and a last gasp for the freedom to be the individuals they always wanted to be.  It seems likely that some of them will not make it as couples.  The moms worry about fitting into the social norms of the mom groups while the men fret about their careers.

Bethany Ball has captured many of the issues and thoughts that affect married couples as the first rush of love and lust for each other starts to fade as career and child rearing take precedence in a couple's life.  The reader will find someone in these men and women to relate to and will want to read to the end to see how everything turns out.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.