A Mother's Kisses
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An indefatigable, irresistible, and wildly inappropriate Jewish mother takes her 17-year-old son to school in this uproarious coming-of-age comedy
Tall and scattered-looking, Joseph has just graduated from high school and is ready for college. But is college ready for him? Apparently not, judging by the rejection letter he receives from Bates and the deafening silence that greets his application to Columbia.
While his friends pack their bags for schools across the country, Joseph mopes around the apartment in his bathrobe and checks the mailbox obsessively. It’s enough to make his mother fear for the boy’s sanity—so she resolves to take matters into her own hands. What follows is a sidesplitting series of misadventures as Meg, whom the New York Times Book Review called “the most unforgettable mother since Medea,” pulls out all the stops to get her boy what he wants.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Bruce Jay Friedman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Middle American levelheadedness finds a hilarious new spokesman in William Binny, whose boredom and love for his daughter transform him from unemployed poultry worker into international hit man. Friedman's witty, beguiling slapstick is set--perhaps in central Arkansas--in a town "voted `America's Third Friendliest City' by a spinoff of Forbes." Widower Binny, whose job was given away while he was trying to find himself on vacation in Czechoslovakia, spends his days minding the timer at the local tanning salon and breakfasting leisurely at Ed Bivens's diner, where he first meets Valentine Peabody, a standoffish, wealthy Brit visiting from Karachi. With his job gone, his wife dead and his best friend recently killed in an auto accident, Binny is lonely, bored, depressed and worried about providing for his 11-year-old daughter, Lettie. Already hoping to make Peabody his new friend, Binny gets more than he bargains for when Peabody offers to make him rich for killing the enemies of Peabody's mysterious billionaire employer. Friedman (A Mother's Kisses; The Lonely Guy's Book of Life, etc.) tells his story in the frank, editorializing voice of Binny, who, for all his foibles, is the novel's most stable character. Amid wacky plot twists, Binny mouths off about bigotry, political correctness, male bonding, fatherhood, showbiz and old-fashioned American family values, among other topics, in crisp prose imbued with Friedman's odd, distinctive comic sensibility. Author tour.
