THE POSITION

''The book was called Pleasuring: One Couple''s Journey to Fulfillment. The title, when the children had first heard it and begun to understand it, was so incontestably mortifying that it threatened to stunt them forever, leaving them clocked in time and steadfast refusal to enter the adult world.'' This is more or less what happens to Holly and Michael, Dashiell and Claudia, after they read the seminal book which their liberal parents Paul and Roz Mellow have written, a book that features tasteful pastel illustrations of their parents'' lovemaking - and which has become a runaway bestseller. Thirty years later, when the children who have grown up in the shadow of these erotically charged parents are adults, and it looks as though the book may be reissued, we catch up individually with their conflicted, complicated 21st-century lives and those of the iconic couple whose marriage has not run as smoothly as it seemed set to do. The Jane Austen of sexual politics, with crackling intelligence, humour and a signature hint of suppressed rage, Meg Wolitzer takes us into the heart of a family that is dysfunctional in its very own way but heartbreakingly familiar.