Meiselman
The Lean Years
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
Meiselman has had enough. After a life spent playing by the rules, this lonely thirty-six-year-old man—"number two" at a suburban Chicago public library, in charge of events and programs, and in no control whatsoever over his fantasies about his domineering boss—is looking to come out on top, at last. What seems like an ordinary week in 2004 will prove to be a golden opportunity (at least in his mind) to reverse a lifetime of petty humiliations. And no one—not his newly observant wife, not the Holocaust survivor neighbor who regularly disturbs his sleep with her late-night gardening, and certainly not the former-classmate-turned-renowned-author who's returning to the library for a triumphant literary homecoming—will stand in his way.
"Meiselman is a triumph of comic escalation." — Sam Lipsyte, author of Hark and The Ask
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Landes's darkly funny debut chronicles a suburban schlemiel's endless capacity for self-sabotage. Living in the rigid orthodox Jewish community of New Niles, Meiselman outwardly plays the dutiful son and husband. Yet, on the inside, he is itching for greater recognition. He finds an opportunity when his boss, head of the local public library, takes ill and asks him to moderate an upcoming discussion with controversial author Izzy Shenkenberg, a former classmate of Meiselman's. Shenkenberg has shrugged off the yoke of their religious upbringing and is famous for writing a novel condemned by a local rabbi for "severe sins of evil speech, scoffing, gossip, slander, and demeaning Torah scholars." Meiselman decides to play the hero and give Shenkenberg his comeuppance for scandalizing their congregation, but in the week leading up to the event, Meiselman's delusions of grandeur repeatedly collide with reality, to tragic and hilarious effect. Landes succeeds in depicting the nuances of the religious community, though some of Meiselman's more outlandish fantasies and flashbacks detailing sexual confessions to his therapist tread too closely to Portnoy's Complaint territory. Fans of Shalom Auslander will appreciate this.
