rachel's Reviews > The Lifestyle

Early on in The Lifestyle, main character Georgina admits that she wanted to be a lawyer because of Ally McBeal, and that is the observation that rings truest in this entire book. This novel is such an oddity, in that I think it's intended to appeal to elder millenials like me but it has this sort of late 90s/early 2000s retrograde sexual conservatism that feels very dated. 50 Shades of Grey was written 11 years ago and looks downright racy compared to Georgina's experiences at swingers' clubs.

For example: early in this book, when Georgina walks in on her fellow law partner husband, Nathan, performing oral sex on her hot 20-something mentee associate Meredith, Georgina deduces that this is not their first encounter because the room is well lit and either they've done it before or Meredith is "the bravest woman in the world." A line that would read clever in an episode of Sex and the City in 1999, sure, but not any story set in 2022.

Aside from its weirdly tight-buttoned approach to sex in a book partially set in sex clubs (!), The Lifestyle is super ridiculous. Right before Georgina walked in on her husband, she had a restaurant meeting with a female client who got way TMI with her after a few drinks about how she is now a swinger (or, in "the lifestyle," as hip, modern swingers say). I do client work too at my job and imagining this happening is...something else. But I guess partners in a private law firm might have different conversations with their clients.

So, within 48 hours of Georgina catching her husband cheating, she actually reflects on her client's swinger soliloquy. Rather than cringing in secondhand embarrassment and trying to forget the poor judgment of talking about your sex life as a business woman to your attorney, she decides that partner swapping is the thing that will save her relationship, too. Then she approaches her best friends from law school about it and decides, without ever actually attending a swingers' event herself, that roping them all into "the lifestyle" with her will solve THEIR problems. Especially her best friend Norah needs her problems solved, because Norah has kids you see and not a career, so she is HAPLESS and Georgina is clearly on a PEDESTAL for this woman.

At the point where Georgina tells Norah she found Nathan cheating on her and Norah responds with "only you would turn your husband cheating into a woman's rights issue," I found a piece of scrap paper and started to record all of the Gen Xisms. The only way this book makes sense to me is if it's not set in the present day. This is straight up 90s historical fiction.

And even THEN it would be totally eye-roll worthy that Georgina,of course, happens to join the swingers' group that her hot and heavy college fling, The One Who Got Away, is also a part of. That's right: she just happened to run into her ex-boyfriend in a small sex group in NEW YORK CITY. Give. Me. A. Break.

I don't need to tell you what happens, because, you know. Plot lines resolve in corny, improbably ways. There's very little actual sex for a book that purports to be all about exploring sexual non-monogamy - which is fine for me. In truth, I only read this book out of curiosity how the subject would be approached. I'm disappointed but not surprised that the answer is "barely," and that it mostly consists of the main characters talking about being in "the lifestyle" and going to clubs and saying "this is it, we are in the lifestyle" and then most of them going on to have very limited interaction within "the lifestyle" as if it is still, deep down, something that's a little shameful.