The Unthinkable Thoughts Of Jacob Green - Hardcover

Braff, Joshua

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565124200 ISBN 13: 9781565124202

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 2004

Synopsis

It's 1977. Jacob Green, a Jewish kid from suburban New Jersey, sits on the stairs during his family's housewarming party, waiting for his father, Abram--charming host, everyone's best friend, and amateur emcee--to introduce him to the crowd. Housewarming parties, Annie Hall parties, and bar mitzvah parties punctuate Jacob's childhood and require command performances by all the Green family members. But when the confetti settles and the drapes are drawn, the affable Abram Green becomes an egotistical tyrant whose emotional rages rupture the lives of his family.

Jacob doesn't mean to disappoint his father, but he can't help thinking the most unthinkable (and very funny) thoughts about public-school humiliation, Hebrew-school disinclination, and in-home sex education (with the live-in nanny!). If only his mother hadn't started college at thirty-six (and fallen for her psychology professor). If only he were more like his rebellious older brother (suspended from Hebrew school for drawing the rabbi in a threesome with a lobster and a pig). If only Jacob could confront his overbearing father and tell him he doesn't want to sing in synagogue, attend est classes, write the perfect thank-you note, or even live in the same house with Abram Green. But, of course, he can't. That would be unthinkable.

This self-assured, comic, yet piercing first novel deftly captures the struggle of an imperfect boy trying to become a suitable son.

About this title

About the Author

Joshua Braff the author of The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green, lives in California with his wife and two children. 

Reviews

A witty, sensitive boy observes the darkly humorous goings-on in his Orthodox Jewish family in 1970s New Jersey. Jacob Green idolizes his older brother, Asher, and misses his withdrawn mother, Claire, but his father, the charismatic, tyrannical Abram, dominates the family. At 10, Jacob's unthinkable sin of forgetting to wear his tzitzit to yeshiva sets off an amusing chain of events—Asher's scheming to trick the rabbi, the destruction of the rabbi's tzitzit and Jacob's suspension—that quickly turns sober when Jacob faces his father's rage. At 13, Jacob lives in a state of anxiety—his learning disability and his father's resulting disappointment erode his confidence; Asher withdraws into adolescence; his mother flees the house to pursue a Ph.D. and another man. Jacob would love to rebel (he's got "a father so far up my ass you can see him performing in my pupils"), but mostly he mentally rewrites his bar mitzvah thank-yous as rants and fantasizes about his live-in babysitter, Megan. When Claire and Abram divorce and Megan moves out, Jacob conveys his angst through a series of letters addressed to Megan. By the time he's 15, Jacob is painfully lonely, as he shuttles between his father's oppressiveness and his mother's honeymooning obliviousness. Although Jacob is a likable, funny narrator, his keen observation and vibrant imagination falter under the weight of Abram's presence and Claire's absence.
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*Starred Review* Like a child, Jacob Green's father, Abram, wants what he wants when he wants it and will throw a temper tantrum if he doesn't get it. What Abram wants most of all is the perfect suburban Jewish family--perfectly intelligent, perfectly religious, and perfect at obeying thy father. Braff's rich, moving, and very funny first novel begins with a 1977 housewarming party at which Abram dramatically introduces each member of his family while the four children and their mother seethe with resentment at being paraded as testaments to Abram's greatness. Jacob's present-tense, first-person narration keeps the pace quick, and the exquisite plotting ensures that Jacob's growing emotional turmoil is paralleled by metaphorically resonant real-life events. To survive and mentally escape his father's cruel, perverse love, young Jacob shares hilariously unthinkable thoughts--the funniest are the hypothetical bar mitzvah thank-you notes in which Jacob thanks people for Jerusalem stone bookends and the like and then details his lust for his live-in nanny before signing "Love, Jacob." Readers will adore Jacob, but Braff's greater accomplishment is describing the boy's complex relationship with his father so well that we are forced to see the cruel, self-obsessed Abram as something more than a mere monster of ego. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1565124200
• ISBN 13: 9781565124202
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 255