My Old Man

When twenty-six-year-old Rachel Block started rabbinical school, she didn't think she'd be dropping out after a semester and a half. But when a sick man dies under her counseling, she realizes she's not cut out for the rabbinate. To make ends meet, she takes a job as a bartender in her Brooklyn neighborhood--much to her parents' chagrin. It's the quintessential quarter-life crisis, compounded by the fact that she's still living just blocks from her childhood home.

Then Rachel falls in love with Hank Powell, an iconoclastic screenwriter twice her age. Suddenly she's reassessing her values, her surroundings, and everything she's ever thought about the "right" kind of relationship. Meanwhile, her interactions with her father, with whom she's always been close, have become increasingly strange. Is he distraught that she's dropped out of school? Is he having his own, midlife, crisis? Something's up...and Rachel's increasingly convinced it might be her father's libido.

With Rachel's own relationship getting wilder and weirder and her parents acting like teenagers, it seems that everyone in Cobble Hill is going crazy. A fresh spin on Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, My Old Man is a black comedy about a dysfunctional Brooklyn family coming apart at the seams.

From the New York Times bestselling author Amy Sohn, one of New York City's most provocative columnists, comes a hip, contemporary novel about sex, sin, and living in the same neighborhood as your parents.

When twenty-six-year-old Rachel Block started rabbinical school, she didn't think she'd be dropping out after a semester and a half. But when a sick man dies under her counseling, she realizes she's not cut out for the rabbinate. To make ends meet, she takes a job as a bartender in her Brooklyn neighborhood--much to her parents' chagrin. It's the quintessential quarter-life crisis, compounded by the fact that she's still living just blocks from her childhood home.

Then Rachel falls in love with Hank Powell, an iconoclastic screenwriter twice her age. Suddenly she's reassessing her values, her surroundings, and everything she's ever thought about the "right" kind of relationship. Meanwhile, her interactions with her father, with whom she's always been close, have become increasingly strange. Is he distraught that she's dropped out of school? Is he having his own, midlife, crisis? Something's up...and Rachel's increasingly convinced it might be her father's libido.

With Rachel's own relationship getting wilder and weirder and her parents acting like teenagers, it seems that everyone in Cobble Hill is going crazy. A fresh spin on Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, My Old Man is a black comedy about a dysfunctional Brooklyn family coming apart at the seams.

Publishers Weekly

Sex columnist Sohn's second novel mines the same territory as her 1999 debut, Run Catch Kiss, and her popular columns in New York Press and New York magazine-basically Sex and the City (for which Sohn wrote a companion guide) without the over-the-top glamour or under-the-skin kindness of the heroines. The laughs-which Sohn certainly provides-tend to be of a guilty sort, inspired by too-easy stereotypes (of Brooklynites, "theaterfucks," the French, etc.). Rachel Block, a 26-year-old rabbinical school dropout-turned-bartender in the gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood where she grew up, is having a "quarterlife crisis," looking for love and a new life direction. She thinks she's found both in Hank Powell, a famous indie-film producer old enough to be her dad. As their "relationship" (a series of sexual encounters, each more degrading than the last) progresses, Rachel learns that her father is having an affair with her young neighbor. Sohn describes both pairings with plenty of salacious details, but the book falters under the weight of pronouncements about bourgeois values, family dynamics and May-December relationships ("It's postmodern primal," says Powell. "Your dad's having sex with a surrogate you while you're down here with a surrogate him!"). Rachel, alternately funny, narcissistic and pathetic, can be difficult to root for, and the book's ending long oversteps the bounds of believability. Agent, Daniel Greenberg. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Amy Sohn is the author of the novels Prospect Park West, My Old Man and Run Catch Kiss. She has also written for New York, The New York Times, The Nation, and Harper's Bazaar. She has written television pilots for such networks as HBO, Fox, and ABC.  She lives in Brooklyn. Visit her at www.AmySohn.com.