Amazon.com: Peep Show (9781565125087): Joshua Braff: Books
Peep Show and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more

Buy New

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
or
Amazon Prime Free Trial required. Sign up when you check out. Learn More
Buy Used
Used - Very Good See details
$3.20 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
   
Kindle Edition
 
   
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Peep Show
 
 
Start reading Peep Show on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Peep Show [Paperback]

Joshua Braff (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

List Price: $13.95
Price: $13.41 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $0.54 (4%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Only 4 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).
Want it delivered Monday, February 27? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle Edition $8.58  
Paperback, Bargain Price $5.58  
Paperback, June 1, 2010 $13.41  
Unknown Binding --  

Book Description

June 1, 2010
David Arbus will be graduating from high school in the spring of 1975. His divorced parents offer two options: embrace his mother’s Hasidic sect or go into his father’s line of work, running a porn theater in the heart of New York’s Times Square. He joins the family business. What else would a healthy seventeen-year-old with an interest in photography do? But he didn’t think it would mean giving up his mother and sister altogether.

Peep Show is the bittersweet story of a young man torn between a mother trying to erase her past and a father struggling to maintain his dignity in a less-than-savory business. As David peeps through the spaces in the screen that divides the men and the women in Hasidic homes, we can’t help but think of his father’s Imperial Theatre, where other men are looking at other women through the peepholes.

As entertaining as it is moving, Peep Show looks at the elaborate ensembles, rituals, assumed names, and fierce loyalties of two secret worlds, stripping away the curtains of both.



Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with The Pact: A Love Story (P.S.) $11.55

Peep Show + The Pact: A Love Story (P.S.)
  • This item: Peep Show

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • The Pact: A Love Story (P.S.)

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details



Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Braff's second novel (after The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green) is a straightforward family drama set amidst an extreme clash of cultures. In the mid 1970s, 16-year-old David Arbus is caught between his mother, whose Hasidic faith is becoming more and more central to her life, and his father, who runs a Times Square porn theatre. A seemingly modest act of rebellion makes David's choice for him, and he quickly finds himself enmeshed in the business of adult entertainment. While his increasingly ill father resists innovations like peep booths and in-house blue movies, David takes photography gigs and tends to his dad. His attempts to maintain a relationship with his sister bring David into sporadic contact with his mother, but rather than reconciling, mother and son only grow further apart. Braff brings together two very different cultures with sympathy for both, but the slim novel leaves little room to adequately develop each member of the family, and, as a result, the story doesn't quite sing. Nevertheless, David and his parents present an intriguing contrast in the struggle to uphold a set of values and the painful necessity of compromise. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Braff's second novel, following The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green (2004), posits an interfamilial culture clash of epic proportions. In 1975, 16-year-old David Arbus, a photography buff about to graduate from high school, is fed up with attempting to straddle the chasm that separates his divorced parents' radically different worlds. His mother, a recent convert to a Hasidic sect, insists that David follow suit, while his father, who owns and operates a Times Square burlesque house, encourages his son to join him in the family business. Most 16-year-old boys would find this choice an easy one to make, and so does David, but he fails to foresee both the agony of separation from his mother and younger sister and the shocking similarity he will find in the two worlds. His father—drawing a rigid moral line between striptease and stripper and refusing to add a new revenue stream by installing peep shows in the lobby—turns out to be every bit as much a purist as his mother. Meanwhile, as David sits in the male-only room at a Hasidic gathering and peeks through the curtain separating men from women, he realizes that peep shows come in more than one variety. Braff makes the most of the comic potential inherent in his outlandish premise, but he sees well beyond the laughs. This is a powerful, sensitively told coming-of-age story about the ways in which rigid worldviews extract their pounds of flesh from us all, especially the young. --Bill Ott

Product Details

  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Algonquin Books; 1 edition (June 1, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1565125088
  • ISBN-13: 978-1565125087
  • Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #489,080 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

 

Customer Reviews

15 Reviews
5 star:
 (8)
4 star:
 (4)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome book!, May 25, 2010
This review is from: Peep Show (Paperback)
Full disclosure, I'm Joshua's wife. So, yes, I'm biased. But, I'm also an English lit major - so those two get balanced out, right? This book is a perfect summer read - beautifully written, fast-moving, visual. It's fun and funny. And heart-wrenching at times. You won't forget the characters and you won't regret buying it. Great for book club discussions. P.S. insider tip, catch Josh reading this summer or fall near you - he's hysterically funny.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Didn't think a book about Times Square "theaters" could tug at my heartstrings, but..., May 27, 2010
This review is from: Peep Show (Paperback)
I thought Braff's first book was excellent, but figured he'd hit the sophomore/non-memoir slump -- but he seems to have avoided that typical fate! I had to warm up to the characters and the book itself, but by a third of the way in I was hooked -- total sympathy even for the father and, yes, the mother. These are real, human characters, just close enough to archetypes to make them accessible, but never typical.

At first blush the subjects would seem far from accessible -- Hasidism and the evolution of porn in 1970's New York -- but the family draws you in, and soon you're learning about those worlds without knowing it, and while still feeling for the characters.

Great read. Just challenging enough to make you think, but eminently readable, even comfortable, especially after the first few, familiarizing chapters.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars storytelling and character building, May 27, 2010
By 
Pooh Bear "NinaJ" (oakland, ca United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Peep Show (Paperback)
I just finished Joshua Braff's newest book Peep Show and loved it. Braff knows how to weave a story through interesting characters. He builds his people so that you really get to know them. I like books that have a story line...not just flowery descriptions that go nowhere. Joshua's Peep Show is classically built storytelling. This will be a great conversation starter for book groups.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews











Only search this product's reviews



Inside This Book (learn more)
Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?


Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums



So You'd Like to...


Create a guide


Look for Similar Items by Category


Look for Similar Items by Subject