Alan Opts Out by Courtney Maum | book review
Beach read vibes with literary commentary on capitalism: a rogue exec in a playhouse, an escaped lobster, and an exclusive neighbourhood club
Imagine if Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting was a beach read. Alan Opts Out by Courtney Maum is a beach read with the benefit of being shelved as literary fiction, which means you get to enjoy some high-brow literature while being thoroughly entertained. It’s firmly one of my favourite reads of the year, and a romp despite mostly taking place in one small, wealthy Connecticut neighbourhood.
Alan is a marketing exec who, at the height of his high-fljying career, loses a huge client thanks to a rogue dairy farmer who rages about capitalism. In trying to make sense of the disaster, Alan internalises the message that materialism has taken over our lives. Worse still, he has perpetuated this problem in both his professional and personal lives. In a hazy response, Alan starts walking around barefoot, then starts sleeping in the luxury playhouse in his garden. He promises his daughter not to kill the lobster that his wife, Vivian, brings home from the country club for his dinner, and names it Lenny. Lenny now lives in the family’s repurposed beverage tub, where his odour slowly infiltrates the place.
Vivian, meanwhile, is still reeling from her upbringing with her unstable, hoarding mother, where she was too embarrassed to invite friends over. Now, she just wants her whole family, including herself and their two daughters, to fit in. She buys the trendiest (and most expensive) helmets for her girls, and works hard to get them into exclusive horse-riding clubs and tennis camps. And her ultimate aspiration is to be inducted as one of the Queen Annes, a hyper-exclusive club of women. To join, she must survive the seeding, beating two other women that year. This requires an orchestra of perfection—one made more difficult by the fact that her husband, who has been perfect until now, has gone rogue, and their daughter, Sunny, thinks she can talk to animals (and there really might be something to it).
I loved this book and raced through it. Though the characters behave a little unhinged, it stays close enough to reality to keep my heart pumping, imagining a very real community like this. I was rewarded during my interview with the author herself, Courtney Maum, which will be published next week, to hear that it was in fact modelled on the neighbourhoods surrounding where she grew up and now lives, and an exclusive club she is well acquainted with, having even spoken at some of their events.
The Queen Annes are stars on their own. They are not the stuck-up, posh rich women I expected them to be. Yes, they are poised on the outside and wealthy—wealthy enough to disregard rules when they want to—but they are also unexpected, subversive in their own ways. And even as they epitomise what Vivian views as perfect and aspirational, their responses to Alan’s leave of common sense also astound and challenge her. And though Whitby claims to be the queen bee, watch out for the real regnant, Margaret, who is also Maum’s favourite.
The book criticises the More is More mentality in a humorous way, high-brow but incredibly entertaining. If you were curious about The Bee Sting but wanted something lighter, Alan Opts Out hits the spot. This book questions why it is we do what we do, and how much of what we take as accepted practice is just because everyone else does it, and when it is in fact neither right, nor what everyone actually wants to do (like wearing shoes everywhere, when some of us could perhaps benefit from walking around barefoot every now and then).
Alan Opts Out is for you if you want a great, entertaining read while engaging in a very smart commentary on consumerism, with a side dish of environmentalism, especially if you’re drawn to books that question what we’re told about success and perfectionism.
Are you putting Alan Opts Out on your TBR, or have you read other novels that poke at consumerism and perfection like this? Let me know in the comments!
P.S. Thank you to Bedford Square Publishers for the ARC.
P.P.S. Watch out for my exclusive interview with the author, Courtney Maum, coming very soon! Subscribe to receive it directly in your inbox.
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Book information
Title: Alan Opts Out
Author: Courtney Maum
Published: 2026
Length: 352 pages
Have you read this book? Join the discussion in the comments—I would love to know your thoughts!
You nailed this review! I absolutely loved this book and am trying to figure out how to write about it right now. I'll definitely be referring readers to this post :)
I just requested this one from my library -- I feel like all of a sudden, I've seen a few people rec it!