My Old Man Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

My Old Man Book

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 TouegRead More

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  • Product Description

    From the New York Times bestselling author and one of the city's most provocative columnists comes a hip, contemporary novel about love, lust, 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 Cobble Hill, her Brooklyn neighborhood -- much to her parents' chagrin. Until now Rachel has always been the perfect daughter, getting straight A's and dating nice Jewish boys. Now she's fending off come-ons from sleazy guys and trying to remember the ingredients in a Metropolitan. It's the quintessential quarter-life crisis, compounded by the fact that she's still living just blocks from her childhood home. To make matters worse, she's having trouble sleeping -- she can barely get through the night without being awakened by the amorous noises of her sexy friend and upstairs neighbor, Liz Kaminsky.

    Then Rachel falls in love with Hank Powell, an iconoclastic screenwriter twice her age (and a Gentile!) and finds herself acting more and more like Liz. Suddenly she's reassessing her values, her surroundings, and everything she's ever believed about the "right" kind of relationship. She begins dressing up in outrageous outfits for midday trysts, while hiding the dirty details from a newly modest Liz. 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? Or is he upset over her mother's newfound independence, now that she's entered menopause and discovered the joys of a book group? 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 sexy comedy about a dysfunctional Brooklyn family coming apart at the seams.

  • 0743238281
  • 9780743238281
  • Amy Sohn
  • 16 August 2004
  • Simon & Schuster
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 336
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