Josh Is Having A Very Bad Day

fathermucker

A day in the life of a dad on the brink: Josh Lansky—second-rate screenwriter, fledgling freelancer, and stay-at-home dad of two preschoolers—has held everything together while his wife is away on business . . . until this morning’s playdate, when he finds out through the mommy grapevine that she might be having an affair. What Josh needs is a break. He’s not going to get one.

Read a great article about Olear on Bookslut.com



Jackie says:
"Fatherhood is fear.  Fatherhood is disappointment.  Fatherhood is anger and envy and lust.  And the surest guarantee of fatherly success is a Spock-like mastery of those base emotions.  Mister Spock, not Doctor."--from fathermucker

"But that's not Josh, who is having a bad week.  He is (was?) a screenwriter with writers' block, a stay at home dad (SAHD) with his son who has Asperger's and his precocious drill sergeant of a toddler daughter.  He's also on his own because his wife is away on business for the week.  He's pitching a freelance interview for a parenting magazine with a famous punk-rock idle, handling his son's total meltdown in a pumpkin patch and trying get rid of the mice in his house.  Then things got a whole lot worse--one of the women at his daughter's group playdate suggests that Josh's wife is having an affair.  His creative and sleep-deprived screenwriter's imagination takes hold of him, and strange things begin to happen.

This book is laugh out funny at times, and other times very intimate, focusing on the loneliness and frustration of parenting two children and trying to keep a marriage alive.  It's a portrait of a suburban outsider trying to follow the complicated rules of the status quo, a man desperately loving his family while desperately hating his circumstances.  Olear's voice is clear, snarky, jaded, hilarious, genuine and it propels the story along nicely."