Fathermucker
A Novel
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3.8 • 10 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
“All kinds of funny—raucously, wickedly, sweetly, saucily, surprisingly, profanely funny…a wonderful novel.”
—Jess Walter, author of The Financial Lives of the Poets
“Deft and funny, true and real. If you read one book this year, read this one.”
—Molly Jong-Fast, author of The Social Climber’s Handbook
Senior editor at the online literary magazine The Nervous Breakdown and author of Totally Killer, author Greg Olear brings us a not-so-typical day in the life of stay-at-home dad Josh Lansky, juggling myriad fatherly responsibilities while dealing with the maddening realization that his away-on-business wife just might be having an affair. Fathermucker is a sweet, heartrending, often hilarious look at family life from the dad’s perspective that Nick Hornby fans will most certainly respond to. As Jessica Anne Blau, author of Drinking Closer to Home and The Summer of Naked Swim Parties so insightfully points out, “Only a writer with the verve, daring, and great talent of Greg Olear could pull off a novel that deals with sippy cups, masturbation, autism spectrum disorder, affairs, and play-dates all at once.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Slipstreaming behind Tom Perotta's Little Children, Olear's familiar take on suburbia is energetically narrated by freelance writer Josh Lansky, a New Paltz, N.Y., Mr. Mom. With his wife, Stacy, a former actress, away on business, Josh must care for their preschoolers, Maude and Roland. But when a female friend suggests that Stacy is having an affair, Josh's orderly world spins off its axis. A single Friday, morning to midnight (with a touch of Saturday thrown in) unfolds in a stream of activities, imaginings, and recollections, sometimes in screenplay form: Roland's Asperger diagnosis; reveries of Stacy having sex with another woman; Josh trying to arrange an interview with an alt-rock sensation; Josh battling recurring imagined scenes of his wife's possible infidelity. Rather than confronting her, Josh confronts the loose-lipped friend, precipitating his own slip and a series of melodramatic questions. Will Josh do the right thing? Will he confront Stacy about the accusation? Will Maude and Roland go to bed without a fuss? Olear's follow-up to Totally Killer is packed with contemporary references (Facebook; Bob the Builder), suburban discontents, and marital dissonances, but also rife with clich and finished with a pat resolution.
