The Easy Way Out | Granta

  • Published: 03/07/2006
  • ISBN: 9781862079021
  • 131x20mm
  • 300 pages

The Easy Way Out

Stephen McCauley

Patrick O’Neil is a travel agent who never goes anywhere. His closest confidante, Sharon, is chain-smoking her way to singles hell, passing up man (‘He used the word “lifestyle” four times since we met’) after man (‘He said I have nice feet’). His parents, proprietors of a suburban men’s store, can’t help fighting about how best to interfere in their three sons’ lives. And his lover, Arthur, whom Patrick can’t quite commit to, wants to cement their relationship by buying a house. Then a call comes in the middle of another sleepless night. Tony, Patrick’s straight-as-an-arrow younger brother, has fallen in love with a beautiful lawyer … unfortunately, she’s not the woman he’s already pledged to marry. Tony’s life is a mess. Finally, the brothers have something in common. That’s when things get complicated. The Easy Way Out is about family and friendship, about being in love and out of love, about the perils of modern life. It’s a story of doing what you want to do, not what you should do.

The Easy Way Out weaves its way deftly through the tangled web of modern allegiances, heaping irony upon irony, yet never once losing its generosity of spirit ... No one tells the truth of the heart quite like Stephen McCauley

Armistead Maupin

Charm may be the hardest of all qualities to pin down on paper, but The Easy Way Out has it brimming from every page

Vogue

This beautifully written, heartbreaking book is an eloquent depiction of the compromises lovers and families make to keep relationships alive. Clever, revealing, sharply drawn

Publishers Weekly

The Author

Stephen McCauley, described by the New York Times as ‘the secret love child of Edith Wharton and Woody Allen’, is the author of The Object of My Affection, which was made into a film starring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd, True Enough, The Easy Way Out, The Man of the House and Alternatives to Sex, all published by Granta Books. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

More about the author →

From the Same Author