As a Baby Boomer, myself, I was looking forward to this fictionalized generational meditation. Finding myself often at odds with both millennials, and my own generation, (the last having written about over several decades, which I may explain in another post.) I could not wait to sink my teeth into this.
The set up is promising. Mark Brumfeld, a failed New York literary type, moves in with his parents in the Baltimore home he grows up. He leaves his girlfriend, band player Cassie Black, to fend for herself in the East Village music world. Cassie soon finds herself in the more lucrative start up world, which takes her to San Francisco.
Meanwhile, Mark's mother, Julia, muses on her life as a failed Baby Boomer.
Yes, Mark does cause a revolution when he blames the Baby Boomers from taking jobs and entitlements from the Millenials that should now be theirs. And he has a point. But what about what we went through, darlings? Ask, and I shall gladly, tell. While Mark is jailed form on the side causing a bureaucratic catastrophe with his ranting, the last was never clever enough to set that catastrophe off. How it happens has nothing to do with Mark.
I wish there had been more ranting, so I could take Mark on. But the novel goes back and in forth, in sections, of the story told from the POV's of Mark, Cassie and Julia.
Daniel Torday has written a fine novel. Just not the one I was expecting.
But anytime you want to take on the Boomers, Dan, here I am!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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