The Arrangement

A hilarious and emotionally charged novel about a couple who embark on an open marriage -- what could possibly go wrong?Lucy and Owen, ambitious, thoroughly therapized New Yorkers, have taken the plunge, trading in their crazy life in a cramped apartment for Beekman, a bucolic Hudson Valley exurb. They've got a two hundred year-old house, an autistic son obsessed with the Titanic, and seventeen chickens, at last count. It's the kind of paradise where stay-at-home moms team up to cook the school's ''hot lunch,'' dads grill grass-fed burgers, and, as Lucy observes, ''chopping kale has become a certain kind of American housewife's version of chopping wood.''When friends at a wine-soaked dinner party reveal they've made their marriage open, sensible Lucy balks. There's a part of her, though -- the part that worries she's become too comfortable being invisible -- that's intrigued. Why not try a short marital experiment? Six months, clear ground rules, zero questions asked. When an affair with a man in the city begins to seem more enticing than the happily-ever-after she's known for the past nine years, Lucy must decide what truly makes her happy -- ''real life,'' or the ''experiment?''