Alan Anderson is an ad man, and always has been. Ever since he realized at a young age that selling products could be an art and a science, he's been determined to excel at both. Now he's the co-owner of one of the country's preeminent ad agencies, the kind of place that gets to pitch the biggest, most lucrative contracts. Few, however, are as big or as potentially lucrative as the new ad campaign for US Dairy, which has been dealing with younger Americans' steadily falling demand for their product, in favor of “milks” that don’t come from cows at all.

To prepare for their pitch, Alan has gone so far as to book a Real Life Dairy Farmer, Tucker, a corn-fed Wisconsin dairyman who can fly out to New York City to help underscore Alan's point that milk is not only nostalgic, it's also sustaining --- more like food than a beverage. But when the day comes to seal the deal, it's not Tucker on the plane but a guy named Daniel, who proceeds to completely derail Alan's pitch with an anti-capitalist tirade.

"Even though it's couched in a borderline absurd plot, this clever book will prompt readers' reflections on what it truly takes to be happy --- that is, after they stop laughing."

Daniel may have lost Alan the deal, but he's also planted the seed of an idea in his head. Perhaps Alan's lifelong quest to compel Americans to want more, more, more is actually morally corrupt. And maybe he doesn't need or want to be part of that world anymore. So, without any forewarning to his colleagues or to his wife, Vivian, Alan goes back to the family's McMansion in suburban Belleport, Connecticut, where he proceeds to move into the $30,000 playhouse in the family's backyard.

There's only one problem. The playhouse is full of Amazon boxes, all of which contain paraphernalia essential to the in-ground pool that Vivian has been intending to build with the proceeds of the US Dairy deal. A pool is key to her big plan, the culmination of a years-long project to become one of the queen bees of Belleport…or, more specifically, one of the Queen Annes, an exclusive, invitation-only group of women who rule the suburb's party scene. Think “Mean Girls” but with a lot more disposable income.

As you can probably imagine, Alan's new outlook (which includes eschewing shoes and showers) doesn't exactly mesh with Vivian's social-climbing agenda. Nor do the shenanigans of her two daughters, one of whom claims to be able to talk to animals and the other of whom begs to transfer to (gasp) public school. The horrors! 

Even though the title might suggest that Courtney Maum's hilarious new novel is all about Alan, the story shifts steadily toward Vivian's point of view, as she barely holds it together through the Queen Annes' etiquette lessons, bitchy gossip and impossibly high expectations, all while worrying that her family is going completely off the rails. But both Alan and her daughters seem to be much happier making their own hookless flies and going fishing than they ever did at the country club. Could it be that Alan is on to something after all?

ALAN OPTS OUT is a scathingly funny novel of suburban competitive consumption, playing out in the cutthroat Queen Anne competition but also in the neighborhood listserv, where snark spreads faster than wildfire. Even though it's couched in a borderline absurd plot, this clever book will prompt readers' reflections on what it truly takes to be happy --- that is, after they stop laughing.