Galant follows up her colorful debut, Rattled
, with another funny suburban family satire. Nina Gettleman’s new yoga studio on the swank side of an old, unnamed Essex County town floods when her poorly placed waiting-room chakra-meditation fountain leaks. One of Nina’s students threatens to sue, and she’s unable to get solace from her husband, Michael, who has been laid off from his job as a meteorologist at Newark Airport. Meanwhile, puberty-age son Adam has decided he’s tired of being a lapsed Jew and wants to have a platinum bar mitzvah. The straw that breaks the familial camel’s back is the arrival of Nina’s hypercritical mother and elderly father, who take refuge in the family’s home to escape a Florida hurricane. And then Michael gets into some serious trouble with the law. Galant has a lock on upper-middle–class suburban skewerings and makes ribald fun of overbearing Jewish mothers and terrorism crackdowns gone awry. But loose ends, an overextended midsection, a rushed ending and a protagonist who never really evolves make this sophomore effort fall short of enlightenment. (Mar.)
