My Ex-Life
A Novel
ISBN10: 1250122449
ISBN13: 9781250122445
Trade Paperback
432 Pages
$16.99
CA$22.50
In prose filled with hilarious and heartbreakingly accurate one-liners, Stephen McCauley has written a novel that examines how we define home, family, and love. Be prepared to laugh, shed a few tears, and have thoughts of your own ex-life triggered.
David Hedges’s life is coming apart at the seams. His job helping San Francisco rich kids get into the colleges of their (parents’) choice is exasperating; his younger boyfriend has left him; and the beloved carriage house he rents is being sold. His solace is a Thai takeout joint that delivers 24/7.
The last person he expects to hear from is Julie Fiske. It’s been decades since they’ve spoken, and he’s relieved to hear she’s recovered from her brief, misguided first marriage. To him.
Julie definitely doesn’t have a problem with marijuana (she’s given it up completely, so it doesn’t matter if she gets stoned almost daily) and the Airbnb she’s running out of her seaside house north of Boston is neither shabby nor illegal. And she has two whole months to come up with the money to buy said house from her second husband before their divorce is finalized. She’d just like David’s help organizing college plans for her seventeen-year-old daughter.
That would be Mandy. To quote Barry Manilow, Oh Mandy. While she knows she’s smarter than most of the kids in her school, she can’t figure out why she’s making so many incredibly dumb and increasingly dangerous choices?
When David flies east, they find themselves living under the same roof (one David needs to repair). David and Julie pick up exactly where they left off thirty years ago—they’re still best friends who can finish each other’s sentences. But there’s one broken bit between them that no amount of home renovations will fix.
Reviews
Praise for My Ex-Life
“Warm, very funny and observant . . . In his adroit and affecting new novel, My Ex-Life, he revisits the emotional territory of that first novel: the special closeness that may arise between a gay man and a straight woman.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Reviews from Goodreads
BOOK EXCERPTS
Read an Excerpt
1
Julie touched the pocket of her white shirt. Yes, the joint was still there, and no, she wasn’t going to smoke it. She’d given up pot, and thank god for that. Life was so much more clear and simple without it. Henry had told her...