How does the author present the American Dream in the novel, Compromising Positions?

Compromising Positions is a humorous indictment of the American Dream as represented by suburbia and the nuclear, one-career family. Career ambition and financial security are shown to be hollow if unaccompanied by self-realization. In this respect, Isaacs portrays the dilemma of the Yuppie generation: financial security and family responsibilities have not erased nostalgia for the freedom associated with the past; political conservatism has not entirely obliterated liberal idealism; the coming of age of the children of the 1960s has been accompanied by nagging doubts about the value of success and the fear that past dreams have been betrayed. As the heroine penetrates the facade of her clean, suburban community and discovers the sordid realities that convention has masked, she realizes that she too has been guilty of accepting her life without question, that within the perfect wife and mother there lives a person with deep needs and desires that her present life cannot fill.