If Jay McInerney had written The Great New York Novel 30 years later, it would have been called Bright Lights, Mom and Dad’s Garage in Mamaroneck. Being in your 20s and shacking up with your parents is not only a growing census category but a literary thing this year, as evidenced by two new novels by first-time Brooklyn authors, and who knows how many more. Tonight, powerHouse Arena in DUMBO hosts Kris D’Agostino and Leigh Stein, who tackle the expanding phase between kidhood and grownupdom in very different ways.
D’Agostino’s The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac is about Calvin Moretti, a 24-year-old film school dropout turned pre-school teacher who moves back in to his family’s Westchester home with his two siblings, as the family’s financial life crumbles around them. In Leigh Stein’s The Fallback Plan, Esther Kohler takes a job babysitting for the neighbors and winds up enmeshed in a complicated web of relationships with friends, her own family and the family she works for. Should be a fun night, a good date, a place to be among friends if you’re still sponging off your parents — or to feel smug and superior if you’re not. Details in our Brokelyn events calendar.
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Jesus, The Fallback Plan is an not a good book. At least Lena Dunham and co. have a small sense of irony in their work; this book is just another of the trend of privileged kids from loving households creating problems for themselves where no problems exist. The whole conceit of the book is how unbelievable it is that she, a college graduate, is in this situation. Spike it. Read Freedom instead.