Alan Shapiro's Broadway Baby
I think this book--described as being about a woman who loves the theatre and pushes her talented son into performing, but which is actually about the life of a super unsatisfied woman who is never happy and makes everyone around her miserable--wants to be an American-Jewish family epic, but the protagonist is too self-centered (or rather, the author is too centered on her) for any of the other characters to be more than thinly drawn figures (the daughter, whose few short sentences made her the most interest character, is sadly almost a complete non-entity). I have no idea what the point of this story is and really hope the protagonist bears little resemblance to the author's mother, b/c all I can think is that this is some sort of attempt to deal with childhood issues. As a side note, what I believe was the last line of the book on the Kindle version feeds right into what are apparently the acknowledgements, which was . . . jarring. This book was just depressing, but not in a good or interesting way. C-.
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