I thought the first half of the book was a poignant portrayal of an older man shocked by the death of his wife and pushed into early retirement by his law firm. The second half was a bit far fetched (in a relationship with a 20 year old) and a bit weird (running over an old homeless man who crapped on his doorstep). I'll read the follow up novel before passing final judgement on this tale (and novelist). ( )

The setting here is very, one might say supremely, bourgeois. Albert Schmidt, newly widowed, recently retired from a cutthroat Manhattan law firm, is fully fitted out with all the appurtenances of great material success. The circles in which he moves are peopled by the very rich and often famous. Six months after his wife's death his daughter, Charlotte, announces her engagement to Jon Riker. Riker, a former mentee, is disliked by Schmidt for numerous reasons. One reason being that he's a Jew. More objectionable to Schmidt, however, is that Riker has knowingly undermined him at the firm where he no longer works. Schmidt has lost his beloved wife, Mary, and now he is losing his daughter to a grasping young man devoid of the romantic sensibilities that he most cherishes. Schmidt feels himself to be a radical truth teller, yet much of his "commentary" he must repress if he is not to alienate those around him. One wonders how he has done it. One wonders how he has managed to be successful. Interpersonal relationships are so key to the high-brow kind of law he once practiced, yet they also annoy him terribly. The answer of course is Mary. Often we hear Schmidt say something like "Mary would have managed it so well." And our sense is of his wife coming along behind him setting matters to rights. There are improbable sex scenes--two sixty-plus men with 20 year old girlfriends--yet somehow Begley carries them off. Certainly, the fact that both men are very rich makes the liaisons more plausible than they would be otherwise. I generally abhor all descriptions of coitus in print. Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater is to my mind full of such repulsive writing. Begley's method however is defter and almost without vulgarity. I haven't quite figured out how he does it. I suppose one could say that Begley writes about territory already covered by John Updike and Philip Roth. Yet Begley's style is distinctive, nothing like the other two writers, and his milieu is far more genteel. I absolutely adore this novel. It's my favorite of all the Begley novels I've read so far, including Wartime Lies, which is saying a lot. ( )

he writes about things worth reading and writing about, but i had trouble with his style. i was especially bothered by his extreme overuse of exclamation points, but the way he wrote in general got in the way for me. ( )

Retirement and growing old are shown to be not as easy as they may seem, as Schmidt deals with the death of his wife, new relationships, isolation, thinking about the past, his own prejudices and the impending marriage of his daughter. This book didn't appeal to me at all at the beginning, but it grew on me towards the end. ( )