In My Old Man, sex columnist Amy Sohn's second novel, protagonist Rachel Block is a rabbinical school dropout who takes a bartending job in her Brooklyn neighborhood where she picks up where she left off--counseling the sick, weary, and wasted. What begins as an amusing tale of self-deprecating soul-searching rapidly turns into a series of salacious sex scandals, adulterous encounters, and the occasional book club gathering for post-menopausal mothers.

My Old Man essentially revolves around two congruent affairs, the first being Rachel's involvement with Hank Powell, a famous screenwriter old enough to be her father. The second affair actually involves Rachel's father, who is cheating on her mother with Liz, Rachel's upstairs neighbor and sex-obsessed best friend. As the novel progresses, Rachel's father strikes up a friendship with Hank, which leads to an odd doubles tennis match and a pasta lunch afterwards between this unlikely foursome. ("I didn't know which was more upsetting: that I was eating post-tennis lunch with my father, his mistress, and my fifty-one-year-old lover or that in the process my dad had discovered my penchant for being strung up to the ceiling.") However, once Rachel's mother stops folk dancing long enough to realize her husband isn't doing all those sit-ups for his health, the real drama starts and Rachel is forced to face the reality of her parents' crumbling marriage.

While Sohn's observations of single life in the city (and the boroughs) are obviously witty and often make for engaging anecdotes, readers may find it difficult to sympathize with any of her relatively pathetic characters. However, lucky for us, Sohn's voice is appealing enough to keep readers engaged for most of the novel. --Gisele Toueg

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.

As another reviewer put it, this book was a chore to read. I don't know why I stuck with it, but I hate to not finish a book. The characters are so poorly drawn that it's impossible to care about any of them. They're also unlikeable for the most part. Others have commented on how Rachel continues to be drawn to Hank in spite of the fact that he's so mean and misogynistic. That's true, but I also can't see what Hank sees in Rachel -- I can't see the appeal. The dialog was completely unbelievable, and the story dragged. In all, a waste of time. In the end I dropped it in the trash, which I never do because I love books. I just wanted to protect other innocents from this drivel.

And stop there. Because it's all downhill after that.

I don't have alot to say about this except that I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, right from its double-entendre title (which I presume was intentional) to the very end. As to comments by others about how well (or how poorly) her characters were "drawn", and how likable they may or may not have been, I can only say that I found the entire journey enjoyable and I love her writing style. Finally, while this is not really a criticism, but just an observation, I found that the book was affected the old conflict which is sometimes inherent in first-person narrative novels which relates to the dichotomy between the narrator and the writer, especially where the narrator is a deeply flawed character (such as in this case). In other words, on one hand, the author herself obviously wants to tell a great story and to do so, she must (and in this case does) employ great storytelling skills, as well as lots of humor and insightful observations--by no means an easy thing to do. On the other hand, the narrator through whom the author speaks, Rachael, is in many ways a total mess of a person with many "issues" to deal with. If Rachael really had all of Sohn's gifts, one suspects that she would not have had at least some of the problems she does.

While the premise of this book, Rachel Block's decision to drop out of rabbinical school and pursue a relationship with an older man, is an interesting one, the book never lives up to its promise. I found the writing to be so-so, the storylines to be a little hard to believe, and most of all, the characters to be extremely underdeveloped and one-dimensional. The story is neither character-driven nor plot-driven and so the book can be a bit of a chore to read. I must say I was also disappointed with Rachel's relationship with Hank, one of the main parts of the novel. What kind of a woman would stay with a man who treats her so horribly? Since there is so little set-up on the Rachel character, it's impossible to fully know. Hank is arrogant, utterly disrespectful, and downright mean, but Rachel simply accepts his rotten behavior and continues to pursue Hank despite his obvious lack of interest in her throughout much of the book. If we are supposed to believe that this is how women in their 20s approach love and romance, that's a pretty sad state of affairs - has Rachel, have women, no sense of self-respect? I was disappointed by this book, but for someone looking for a short, snappy, easy read with dialogue that is occasionally interesting and very graphic sex talk, this might be just the thing.

I picked this book up because of the charming John Currin painting on the cover, but was very disappointed. Ms. Sohn is a sex columnist for the New York Press and New York Magazine, and I guess that makes her feel that she is the 2000's version of Erica Jong. "My Old Man" is supposed to be a picaresque, sexy romp but it comes across as cheap and the sex is both graphic and unerotic at the same time.

Main character Rachel Block is unconvincing depicted as a drop-out rabbinical student, whose lack of compassion has actually caused dying man to keel over dead (because she has failed to console him in anything approaching an appropriate manner). Unsure of what to do at this point in her career, she turns to bartending in the Brooklyn neighborhood she grew up in. Having a chance to meet the famous indie filmmaker, Hank Powell, she throws herself at him and they begin a coarse, entirely sexual affair devoid of any tenderness or romance.

Ms. Sohn name drops so much throughout the book (famous filmmakers, painters, actors), that I am certain Power is supposed to be a particular individual (or composite) but I couldn't tell who. His background of indie films sounds very like Woody Allen's, but the character is much younger. Unfortunately, Ms. Sohn chooses to write his dialogue IN DIALECT, which is one of the most irritating things in the entire book -- why Powell and not the other New Yawkers? -- but I guess it's to underscore his crudeness. If so, it works but only on that level -- Powell is so repugnant (ugly, fat, bald, rude, abusive) that no normal woman would ever be remotely attracted to him.

The character of Rachel is so poorly drawn that we have no idea at all why she ever wanted to be a rabbi, nor does she tell us about her feelings about giving up a career in the clergy -- she doesn't even seem to feel particularly bad about the patient she practically "depressed to death". In fact, she has no spiritual leaning at all, which seems odd in someone who went to all the time and expense to attend rabbinical school. This feels like a detail added to the story just to raise the titillation level -- she's not just a typical Brooklyn Jewess but a FORMER RABBINICAL STUDENT, so her descent into meaningless sex will seem all that more "shocking".

Well...it's not. The sex feels really gratuitous and designed to shock or gross out. I can tell the general theme of the book is to be breezy and funny, but it the desperation in it makes it depressing. None of the characters undergo any self knowledge or transformation...it's just crudely linked chapters that veer from one sexual encounter to another.

I don't think that erotic novels need to cover all the basics of safe sex, but I can honestly state I have never read a book, in this age of AIDS and STDs, that apparently comes out in favor of the "withdrawal method" (coitus interruptus) and non-use of condoms! This seems unbelievably irresponsible -- it's one thing if characters are depicted doing something self-destructive, but the author herself seems to be blandly endorsing this. [...]

I could say more, but am demurring due to space considerations. This was one of the more depressing and discouraging books I have read recently -- the kind that makes you want to take a bath afterwards and wash your hands with santizer. And never have sex again.