Secondhand Smoke

"A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES Meets THE CORRECTIONS

in Friedmann's warm and wacky tale of family dysfunction and redemption" —Library Journal

“The

outrageous developments and swift pace

make this novel hard to resist.”

–Publishers Weekly

JERUSHA'S POISON…

…to just about everyone--particularly her adult children. Fortunately, poison is the very superfood of the satirist. Patty Friedmann, the reigning queen of black comedy, hits one out of the park with her family straight out of Tolstoy--unhappy in its own way, a uniquely twisted Southern way.

Meet the Baileys. Born and bred in a working class New Orleans neighborhood, Zib and Wilson think the thick cloud of cigarette smoke enveloping their mother is what probably killed their father. Certainly the toxicity of Jerusha’s dark, cynical attitudes has driven her children far from the nest. Wilson has escaped to Chicago, married a woman who hates him, converted to Judaism, and become a decorated professor of Organic Evolution. Zib, almost forty, has made it only as far as the Florida Panhandle, where she's an assistant manager at the local Winn-Dixie, doomed to fending off a sleazy boss given to late night phone calls. Only one person, as isolated as she is, shows Jerusha any affection: Dustin Puglia, chubby, wise, and fearless, a ten-year-old living next door with a poisonous mother of his own.

Although Wilson and Zib have forged independent lives away from their mother—as well as each other—their father's death brings them back together for a darkly droll, yet heart-wrenching round of domestic insanity. Does it remind you of AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY? Or THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS? Patty Friedmann got there first! And she’s just as funny and observant as the authors of those splendid screenplays.

Who Will Like It

: Fans of off-beat dark comedies like AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, family dramas with a lot more humor than THE CORRECTIONS, the incomparable CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, and another mistress of the twisted, Flannery O’Connor. Not to mention Patty Friedmann's other books:

TOO JEWISH #1
TOO JEWISH: THE NEXT GENERATION (formerly The Exact Image of Mother)
PICK-UP LINE (formerly Side Effects)
ELEANOR RUSHING
A LITTLE BIT RUINED
ODDS

“Secondhand Smoke does not seek life in fancy words and clever euphemisms.

It tingles because it’s raw and true

… The way [Friedmann] carves a sentence gives you the sense that she’s always known how to do it.” –

Critique Magazine