Customer Reviews

Life, Sex, And the Pursuit of Happiness

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This is a fascinating book. It takes us through a series of vignettes primarily in and around the lives of Randy, a voraciously sexual west-coast ad designer who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish east coast baker family, and Paul, a sometime east-coast actor turned Swiss-trained California psychiatrist with his share of tragedies and struggles to cope with.

The stories and timeframes shift over 21 years, as we learn what makes up Paul, Randy and the people they are intimate with - spouses, parents, lovers, bosses, friends - and gain insight as to why. The fact Paul and Randy shared a chance common acquaintance, years apart, leads to some healing and emotional unblocking for both, in an almost mystically unconscious way.

The artfulness of the prose and dialog is slightly strained at times when the author or characters describe feelings and relationships, but I didn't mind because I chalked it up to the shorthand way the psychiatrist author can get to the essence of relationships. In fact, readers may see their own relationships in simpler, more pure terms as a result, with some liberation of their own undercurrent feelings. (Maybe the book is intentionally a bit hypnotic or neuro-linguistically programmed?)

If you've ever wondered what therapists get out of therapy, you'll be interested. This book is a fascinating meditation on the way relationships can, but sometimes don't, help heal pain (internal or interpersonal) that may in turn have been caused by relationships and what happened in and to them. And it does this 98% by story and character.

Recommended, if this review speaks to you.