Paper stock is poor and some prints are a bit blurry.
A psychologist has a lot of patients as well as a wife and son who give him problems but he never seems to connect with anyone. The epileptic son of a Holocaust survivor has some nice moments but he's largely a victim. The horrid professor provides some nice moments with the psychologist as he hates her, but it doesn't sustain the novel, since the reader also hates her.
For the most part everyone in this book is too affluent, too white, too WASPish. Even though the main character is supposed to be Jewish he's so assimilated that you wonder why it's even mentioned. His parents are the most interesting characters in the book because they seem to have escaped from a Philip Roth novel, but somehow they just aren't that true. Everything that they do is ethnic stereotype. They are there to be loud, pushy and whine about how the psychologist isn't going to raise his kid Jewish or even get a bris for the kid. (if the author knew any yiddish they would complain that the protagonist was shtupping a shiksa, but thankfully it seems that Mr. Schwartz has not read those particular issues of Mad magazine.) They come in, they leave and we get back to the hopeless whiners. They don't feel real, but compared to the real characters, they are a bit of a relief.
This is a great book for people who like literature about "everyday people", the upper middle class who just wants to get by and be normal. My taste runs more to the bizarre, the interesting and the unique and I could not relate to people who's only goal is to be normal or well liked (this is also why I cheer when Willy Loman dies at the end of Death of a Salesman)
Too bad the characters in this book aren't very exciting. These characters make the Thirtysomething gang seem fun by comparison.
Still maybe his next book will be better.
List price: $39.99 (that's 50% off!)
Through reading and working through the step-by-step examples I've actually learned to use FileMaker Pro 4 to create everything from simple to complex databases that have greatly simplified the day-to-day operations of my business and even my personal data.
Now I find myself overwhelmed with ideas for new databases but don't have the time to create them all, but I *do* have the skills. I'm very pleased with my investment in this book. It has paid off handsomely. Highly recommended!