From the New York Times bestselling author Amy Sohn, one of New York City's most provocative columnists, comes a hip, contemporary novel about sex, sin, and living in the same neighborhood as your parents.
When twenty-six-year-old Rachel Block started rabbinical school, she didn't think she'd be dropping out after a semester and a half. But when a sick man dies under her counseling, she realizes she's not cut out for the rabbinate. To make ends meet, she takes a job as a bartender in her Brooklyn neighborhood--much to her parents' chagrin. It's the quintessential quarter-life crisis, compounded by the fact that she's still living just blocks from her childhood home.
Then Rachel falls in love with Hank Powell, an iconoclastic screenwriter twice her age. Suddenly she's reassessing her values, her surroundings, and everything she's ever thought about the "right" kind of relationship. Meanwhile, her interactions with her father, with whom she's always been close, have become increasingly strange. Is he distraught that she's dropped out of school? Is he having his own, midlife, crisis? Something's up...and Rachel's increasingly convinced it might be her father's libido.
With Rachel's own relationship getting wilder and weirder and her parents acting like teenagers, it seems that everyone in Cobble Hill is going crazy. A fresh spin on Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, My Old Man is a black comedy about a dysfunctional Brooklyn family coming apart at the seams.
In My Old Man, sex columnist Amy Sohn's second novel, protagonist Rachel Block is a rabbinical school dropout who takes a bartending job in her Brooklyn neighborhood where she picks up where she left off--counseling the sick, weary, and wasted. What begins as an amusing tale of self-deprecating soul-searching rapidly turns into a series of salacious sex scandals, adulterous encounters, and the occasional book club gathering for post-menopausal mothers.
My Old Man essentially revolves around two congruent affairs, the first being Rachel's involvement with Hank Powell, a famous screenwriter old enough to be her father. The second affair actually involves Rachel's father, who is cheating on her mother with Liz, Rachel's upstairs neighbor and sex-obsessed best friend. As the novel progresses, Rachel's father strikes up a friendship with Hank, which leads to an odd doubles tennis match and a pasta lunch afterwards between this unlikely foursome. ("I didn't know which was more upsetting: that I was eating post-tennis lunch with my father, his mistress, and my fifty-one-year-old lover or that in the process my dad had discovered my penchant for being strung up to the ceiling.") However, once Rachel's mother stops folk dancing long enough to realize her husband isn't doing all those sit-ups for his health, the real drama starts and Rachel is forced to face the reality of her parents' crumbling marriage.
While Sohn's observations of single life in the city (and the boroughs) are obviously witty and often make for engaging anecdotes, readers may find it difficult to sympathize with any of her relatively pathetic characters. However, lucky for us, Sohn's voice is appealing enough to keep readers engaged for most of the novel. --Gisele Toueg--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Amy's new novel, Motherland, will be published in August 2012 by Simon & Schuster. Beyond that . . . In 1973 Amy was born in Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. Raised in Brooklyn Heights, Amy went on to attend Hunter College High School in Manhattan, alma mater of Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan. In 1995 Amy was graduated from Brown University, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, and with Honors. In 1995 Amy returned to Brooklyn to pursue a career as an actress. It didn't go well, though she did appear in an episode of "Law and Order" for forty seconds, an episode for which she still receives residuals. In 1996 she became a columnist at New York Press, writing her autobiographical "Female Trouble" column, a chronicle of dating below Fourteenth Street that elicited loads of invective from readers and shamed her parents at dinner parties. This column was satirized in a cartoon by Anthony Haden-Guest that featured a blond and brunette talking, with the brunette telling the blond, "I'm the new you." This was thought to be based on Amy and Candace Bushnell, though Anthony never admitted it outright. In 1999, Simon & Schuster published Amy's first novel, Run Catch Kiss, which has since been translated into four languages. According to the New York Times review of the book, "A little-known event that took place around the time that Richard M. Nixon was resigning as President was the birth of Amy Sohn, who has emerged as a representative of her generation." The review included the word "concomitant," "concupiscence," and "Spenglerian," three words that do not appear in the novel. In 1999 Amy became a columnist at the New York Post, where she enraged management by comparing Mayor Giuliani to Hitler and writing an expose on the Yankees locker room. In 2000, Amy co-created, wrote and starred in a television show for Oxygen's "X Chromosome" animated series entitled "Avenue Amy." In August 2001 Amy landed at New York magazine. At New York, her columns mirrored the trajectory of her life, from "Naked City" to "Mating" to "Breeding." In 2004 Simon & Schuster published her second novel, My Old Man, about a May-December relationship between a rabbinical school dropout and an aging screenwriter. It took place in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. In 2008 she became a columnist at England's Grazia magazine, where she wrote a column called "Diary of a Recessionista." The recession soon took over and the column was axed. Over the years, Amy has also written for Harper's Bazaar, Premiere, Playboy, Elle, The New York Times, and Details. She is a recipient of a reader award from Playboy called the Golden Bunny and was voted one of Park Slope's 100 most influential people. She is certain she is the only individual to have received both honors. In 2009 Simon & Schuster published Amy's third novel, Prospect Park West, about four Park Slope mothers on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It was translated into five languages. As a pundit on popular culture, she has appeared on such networks as VH1, MTV, Fox News, CNN, Lifetime, MSNBC, and PBS. She has written television pilots for ABC, Fox, Lifetime and most recently, HBO and Sarah Jessica Parker, who optioned Prospect Park West. She has written two films, a Gen X Big Chill called Spin the Bottle, and a Gen X horror film called Pagans. She grew up in Brooklyn, where she still lives today. She has a brother, five years younger. She voted for Barack Obama and raised money for him. Her favorite writers are Laurie Colwin, Hilma Wolitzer, Charles Bukowski, Nathanael West, Mary Gaitskill, and Bruce Jay Friedman. Her favorite films include Gregory's Girl, The Landlord, The Apartment, My Life as a Dog, and Together. She had her seventh birthday party at Kramer versus Kramer but not all the children were permitted by their parents to come. As a child she was taken to the films Heartland, Splash, Heart Like a Wheel, The Magical Mystery Tour, and Mr. Hulot's Holiday and is glad about it. She thinks Wainwright elevates Apatow and not the other way around. She has strong biceps but weak abs. She is aware that her inspiration for this list was the Kevin Costner speech in Bull Durham. She has had sexual fantasies about Richard Ford and they were productive. If she could switch careers she would be a Broadway musical theater producer or a sommelier. She dresses to the left. She believes that when it comes to hair highlights, cheap is expensive. Her favorite joke is, "What's the difference between a Jew and a Gentile? A Gentile leaves without saying goodbye and a Jew says goodbye without leaving." She also enjoys a very tasteless Katharine Hepburn joke whose punchline is, "How do you turn it off?" Her favorite candy is York Peppermint Patties and she always has a knot in the same section of her hair when she wakes up. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter. Like her at www.facebook.com/amysohn and visit her at www.amysohn.com.
I picked this book up because of the charming John Currin painting on the cover, but was very disappointed. Ms. Sohn is a sex columnist for the New York Press and New York Magazine, and I guess that makes her feel that she is the 2000's version of Erica Jong. "My Old Man" is supposed to be a picaresque, sexy romp but it comes across as cheap and the sex is both graphic and unerotic at the same time.
Main character Rachel Block is unconvincing depicted as a drop-out rabbinical student, whose lack of compassion has actually caused dying man to keel over dead (because she has failed to console him in anything approaching an appropriate manner). Unsure of what to do at this point in her career, she turns to bartending in the Brooklyn neighborhood she grew up in. Having a chance to meet the famous indie filmmaker, Hank Powell, she throws herself at him and they begin a coarse, entirely sexual affair devoid of any tenderness or romance.
Ms. Sohn name drops so much throughout the book (famous filmmakers, painters, actors), that I am certain Power is supposed to be a particular individual (or composite) but I couldn't tell who. His background of indie films sounds very like Woody Allen's, but the character is much younger. Unfortunately, Ms. Sohn chooses to write his dialogue IN DIALECT, which is one of the most irritating things in the entire book -- why Powell and not the other New Yawkers? -- but I guess it's to underscore his crudeness. If so, it works but only on that level -- Powell is so repugnant (ugly, fat, bald, rude, abusive) that no normal woman would ever be remotely attracted to him.
The character of Rachel is so poorly drawn that we have no idea at all why she ever wanted to be a rabbi, nor does she tell us about her feelings about giving up a career in the clergy -- she doesn't even seem to feel particularly bad about the patient she practically "depressed to death". In fact, she has no spiritual leaning at all, which seems odd in someone who went to all the time and expense to attend rabbinical school. This feels like a detail added to the story just to raise the titillation level -- she's not just a typical Brooklyn Jewess but a FORMER RABBINICAL STUDENT, so her descent into meaningless sex will seem all that more "shocking".
Well...it's not. The sex feels really gratuitous and designed to shock or gross out. I can tell the general theme of the book is to be breezy and funny, but it the desperation in it makes it depressing. None of the characters undergo any self knowledge or transformation...it's just crudely linked chapters that veer from one sexual encounter to another.
I don't think that erotic novels need to cover all the basics of safe sex, but I can honestly state I have never read a book, in this age of AIDS and STDs, that apparently comes out in favor of the "withdrawal method" (coitus interruptus) and non-use of condoms! This seems unbelievably irresponsible -- it's one thing if characters are depicted doing something self-destructive, but the author herself seems to be blandly endorsing this. [...]
I could say more, but am demurring due to space considerations. This was one of the more depressing and discouraging books I have read recently -- the kind that makes you want to take a bath afterwards and wash your hands with santizer. And never have sex again.
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As another reviewer put it, this book was a chore to read. I don't know why I stuck with it, but I hate to not finish a book. The characters are so poorly drawn that it's impossible to care about any of them. They're also unlikeable for the most part. Others have commented on how Rachel continues to be drawn to Hank in spite of the fact that he's so mean and misogynistic. That's true, but I also can't see what Hank sees in Rachel -- I can't see the appeal. The dialog was completely unbelievable, and the story dragged. In all, a waste of time. In the end I dropped it in the trash, which I never do because I love books. I just wanted to protect other innocents from this drivel.
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First Sentence:
WHY is this happening to me, Rabbi? the dying man moaned from his bed. Read the first pageKey Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Cobble Hill, New York, Rosh Hashanah, Hank Powell, Mira Sorvino, Court Street, Smith Street, Julia Roberts, Koffee Klatsch, Neil Roth, The Brother-in-Law, Daryl Hannah, Puerto Rican, Rachel Block, The History of the Pencil, Grey Goose, Jennifer Lopez, The Silent Passage, Flash Flood, Rabbi Freedman, Rosanna Arquette, Shelly Katz, Stoli Cran, Stu Zaritsky, Upper West Side
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