Books with author Patty Friedmann

"A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES Meets THE CORRECTIONSin 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 WeeklyJERUSHA'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 #1TOO JEWISH: THE NEXT GENERATION (formerly The Exact Image of Mother)PICK-UP LINE (formerly Side Effects)ELEANOR RUSHINGA LITTLE BIT RUINEDODDS“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

Otto Fisher has ADHD. He’s also adopted. At thirteen, he never thought much about where he came from until his seventh-grade teacher at the prestigious St. Michael’s school in New Orleans asks her class to write about an ancestor. Each student must perform their piece in a school play. Otto’s adoptive mother, whom he adores, helps him write about one of her ancestors, who was in the Holocaust.Otto’s story is the most moving of all—but not for his father, a college English professor who is also a racist and an anti-Semite.The play triggers a series of conflicts in the Fisher household, culminating in Otto’s father beating his mother. Otto’s older sister, Ada, stops the fight. Then their father moves out. Which leaves Otto torn between the mother and sister he adores and the father he desperately needs. When he goes to visit his father, a series of events forces everyone in the Fisher family to question the meaning of family.In this funny, bittersweet, poignant and thoroughly engaging short novel, Otto narrates the story of his young life with humor, grace and surprising insight.

In the midst of the biggest natural disaster in American history--Hurricane Katrina--15-year-old Summer "Sumbie" Elmwood's two-year-old sister disappears from the hospital after open-heart surgery and Sumbie is the prime suspect. But in the chaos of New Orleans after the storm, no one is looking for just one little girl. Sumbie must find her missing sister and enlists her two would-be boyfriends to help her, hoping against hope that it's not too late.

Otto Fisher has ADHD. He’s also adopted. At thirteen, he never thought much about where he came from until his seventh-grade teacher at the prestigious St. Michael’s school in New Orleans asks her class to write about an ancestor. Each student must perform their piece in a school play. Otto’s adoptive mother, whom he adores, helps him write about one of her ancestors, who was in the Holocaust.Otto’s story is the most moving of all—but not for his father, a college English professor who is also a racist and an anti-Semite.The play triggers a series of conflicts in the Fisher household, culminating in Otto’s father beating his mother. Otto’s older sister, Ada, stops the fight. Then their father moves out. Which leaves Otto torn between the mother and sister he adores and the father he desperately needs. When he goes to visit his father, a series of events forces everyone in the Fisher family to question the meaning of family.In this funny, bittersweet, poignant and thoroughly engaging short novel, Otto narrates the story of his young life with humor, grace and surprising insight.

In the midst of the biggest natural disaster in American history--Hurricane Katrina--15-year-old Summer "Sumbie" Elmwood's two-year-old sister disappears from the hospital after open-heart surgery and Sumbie is the prime suspect. But in the chaos of New Orleans after the storm, no one is looking for just one little girl. Sumbie must find her missing sister and enlists her two would-be boyfriends to help her, hoping against hope that it's not too late.