A comic novel of ambition and infidelity in the suburbs by “the funniest serious writer to be found either side of the Atlantic” (Kinglsey Amis).
Harking from the golden age of fiction that skewered the middle-class American dream—the school of John Updike and John Cheever—this novel by the author of Slouching Towards Kalamazoo looks with laughter upon the lawns, cocktails, and creature comforts of suburbia, as well as the antics and anxieties that lurk just beneath its manicured facade. De Vries’s classic situation comedy The Tunnel of Love follows the interactions of a socially insecure, pun-loving family man, an officious lady caseworker from an adoption agency, and a chauvinist pig—all of whom are neighbors who know far too much about one another’s private lives.
In this farcical tale of marital quibbles, De Vries employs his verbal fluidity and singular gift for wordplay to offer readers “his Scarlet Letter, in which adultery leads not to a consciousness of sin and repentance but to a neurotic guilt and the delicious enjoyment it affords” (D.G. Myers, from the introduction).
