From Publishers Weekly
Grodstein's first novel (after 2002's collection
The Best of Animals) is a sweet, honest account of the life and loves of 20-something Joel Miller. It's a rainy Saturday, and Miller has just been directed to walk the 12 blocks to the independent drug store in Park Slope, Brooklyn, to buy his girlfriend a pregnancy test. The rest of the novel takes place as Miller waits outside the bathroom door for Lisa to reveal the results, all the while pondering past loves and future concerns. There was his father Stan's stiff advice to "
Remember the consequences, son" of what he called "the deed"—but here Miller is, living with a long-haired, potentially pregnant third-grade teacher with a broken leg. They are "admirable roommates"; they have regular "brisk, healthy sex." But is it enough? Miller recalls the complicated bonds between his depressed mother, Bay, and his father; he spent his high school years weaving his way through the emotional consequences of his father's departure and his mother's instability. But even more powerfully, Miller recalls his first love, Blair, the Park Avenue beauty whose attentions made him feel like he was "eating chocolate for the first time after a lifetime of bread." But Blair eventually teaches him a wrenching lesson about the truths of love. Grodstein's effortless prose slides forward and back in time, charting universal doubts with both specificity and economy. Her story is modest, but compulsively readable, as her familiar characters—a fumbling father, a sad mother, a confused boy, a fratty best friend and an ice princess—move in paths both inevitable and surprising.
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--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Literary editor Joel Miller galumphs through this sad-sack tale of love won and lost with the low-level energy of a three-toed sloth. Reader Ernie Schwartz makes a gallant effort to infuse energy into the lackadaisical lothario, but to no avail. Has Joel made his girlfriend, Lisa, pregnant? By the time the question is answered, it doesn't matter. Listeners expecting the usual romantic comedy sequence of boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back will be disappointed with the disjointed episodes of poor Miller's life. Also, Schwartz's bizarre pronunciations of simple words like "khakis" and steak "tartar" bounce the reader right out of Miller's tiny universe. R.O. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine--
Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
--This text refers to the
Audio CD
edition.
