Courtney Maum's comic novel skewers ambition, consumerism, and the price of privilege through the midlife crisis of an advertising executive who decides to drop out of capitalism. Alan Anderson has built a successful life and a thriving career by persuading people to buy things they don't need. He is preparing for the biggest pitch of his career—the coveted US Dairy account, whose executives want trendy oat milk knocked off its pedestal and cow's milk sales revived—when an anarchist farmer derails his presentation. Alan bombs the pitch, but he walks away with an epiphany: he will no longer exploit other people's insecurities in the service of selling. He is opting out. To the horror of his wife, Vivian, Alan moves into the backyard playhouse of their home in Greenwich, Connecticut, to live off the land and, worse, to spend time with his family. Vivian, meanwhile, is only a few affirmations and social tests away from finally being admitted to the elite women's club she covets, and Alan's renunciation threatens everything she has worked for—as do their daughters, one of whom wants to write plays and another who feels an unnerving empathy for animals. But instead of scandalizing the neighborhood, Alan's less-is-more experiment begins, improbably, to catch on. Maum uses this premise for a satire of affluent American striving, status anxiety, and the emptiness of a life organized around consumption, while keeping her characters human and her comedy warm. By turns funny, sexy, and poignant, Alan Opts Out asks a mischievous question: what if everyone actually wanted what Alan has stopped selling?