First of all, it’s one of the greatest novel titles that I can think of. And it’s a smart, compelling story that I just loved reading. Last weekend I took it to a bench by a park and read for an hour straight with the greatest of pleasure.
Re: the sex scenes. I thought this comment by Sittenfeld in a recent interview was completely on point: “In the novel, Hillary worked at a legal aid clinic... I have two female friends who are law professors. Both of my friends answered so many questions that I would ask about like, "If you work in a legal aid clinic and then you go into court, and then what are the words that come out of your mouth, and how many minutes are you interacting with the judge for? And if you go to see the client, what happens the first time?"… I sometimes would chuckle to myself as I was trying to wrap my head around family law or housing disputes in the early 1970s. I would think, "I already know that whenever I finally finish this book, I'm just going to end up talking about like, 'And then Bill put his tongue in my mouth.'" [Laughs.]
