The Life and Times of Stanley Noodleman

Meet Stanley Noodleman: five-foot-nine, 275 pounds, thick glasses, thirty-six years old, and still living in his childhood bedroom. He has never had a second date in his life - but he's not complaining, because that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

Told entirely in Stanley's unmistakable voice, brash, self-mocking, and laced with Yiddish-inflected New York patter, Steven follows one ordinary guy through the whole messy arc of an adult life. There's the humiliation of the singles-bar circuit and the personal ads ("Stanley Noodleman, SJM"), a naked misadventure on a fire escape, a run at Overeaters Anonymous chasing both weight loss and women, and, eventually, a wedding, a house, two kids, and a marriage that slowly comes apart at the seams. By the final chapters, Stanley, nearing sixty, evicted, and sleeping in a roach-infested furnished room, is doing the math on how close he really is to the men he has spent his whole life stepping over on the subway.

It is a comedy, mostly. Stanley narrates his own disasters with the timing of a stand-up comic and the self-awareness of a man who has never once stopped to catch his breath. But underneath the punch lines sits something sadder and more honest: a portrait of loneliness, appetite, and the small, stubborn hope that keeps a person showing up for one more blind date, one more chance.

Funny, raw, and unexpectedly moving, Steven will appeal to readers of Jewish-American humor and tragicomic family fiction, and to anyone who has ever wondered how a life adds up once you tally all the near-misses.