I whole-heartedly disagree that Sohn offers a "fresh look at modern marriage" with this book. All the relationships are bizarrely messed up, but that's what makes the book funny. Realistic it is not, it reads like a prime-time network soap opera, but it is entertaining. Negative marks for the author's gratuitous name dropping, such a lazy way to fill pages and move the plot along. I was also taken aback by Sohn's embrace of several negative stereotypes because they did not entirely feel satirical. ( )

a lot of very whiny and unlikeable characters ( )

This looked like a fun beach read. Instead, it was a disgusting, vulgar, disturbing "story" about rich snobs with no consequences for their actions and no remorse, including: drug dealing, a teacher having sex with a student, drinking while nursing and not caring, "affectionate rape" and "you want to be violated" (let's run those by rape victims and see what they think), one character who "understood why some mothers shook their babies to death" (is that supposed to be funny?), watching your four-year-old "humping one of the sprinklers," more racist remarks than I could count (e.g., "Becoming a single mother is like being white all your life and then waking up one morning and realizing you're black" and calling an Asian woman a "paddy whacker"), making fun of the disabled ("Cassie jerked her head violently like an epileptic"—maybe Trump took lessons in insulting people from Sohn). And then there's the actress who is indebted to the man who made her scrub his bathroom and then ejaculated on the floor she had cleaned and told her to lick it up. And what about the man who discovers the wild sex he had (while cheating on his wife) was with his daughter?

Worst of all, I felt the book was an insult to Cape Cod and particularly to Wellfleet. This book tarnishes the image of a beautiful place. (Another quote: "For someone so wealthy to come to the Cape, that took slumming too far.")

I've never thrown a book in the trash before, but that's where this one belongs. ( )

Motherland gives us a well-developed cast of characters who are parents (one way or another) based in Park Slope - Brooklyn, NY. Tons of sex and all the complexities of relationships. Two excerpts from the book that sum up this story for me: "There was an entire New York of people who never came in contact with the homeless, thought nothing of dropping five hundred dollars on a dinner, and went everywhere by private car." And, "Marriage is hard...Kids are hard. You can't expect it to be how it was at the beginning...It shouldn't feel like death." ( )

Solid summer read with some great insights into Brooklyn hipsters turned parents, married life and parenting in the new millennium.