Leaky Tubs

Leaky Tubs trots out a variety of societal misfits who rise to the surface of Brodsky’s toxic satire, exhibiting everything from compulsive toilet routines to rage brought on by a surfeit of Thanksgiving turkey. The reader meets, firsthand, an eighty-three-year-old ersatz Mr. Universe, who ogles female weightlifters; two born losers who see themselves as evolutionary throwbacks to their simian ancestors; a crematory operator who misfires but redeems himself with an eleventh-hour substitution; a writer who strains so hard to break his block that he leaves his mark in a different medium; a fruitful-but-unmultiplying wino who seduces a teenage waitress at “Vito’s Little Sicily,” only to end up under the two-jug influence of impotence; and a desperate commuter who rolls in on fumes to a gas station, wrangles with a broken pump, and pushes a vindictive attendant too far.