Meiselman: The Lean Years

Landes’s darkly funny debut chronicles a suburban schlemiel’s endless capacity for self-sabotage. Living in the rigid orthodox Jewish community of New Niles, Meiselman outwardly plays the dutiful son and husband. Yet, on the inside, he is itching for greater recognition. He finds an opportunity when his boss, head of the local public library, takes ill and asks him to moderate an upcoming discussion with controversial author Izzy Shenkenberg, a former classmate of Meiselman’s. Shenkenberg has shrugged off the yoke of their religious upbringing and is famous for writing a novel condemned by a local rabbi for “severe sins of evil speech, scoffing, gossip, slander, and demeaning Torah scholars.” Meiselman decides to play the hero and give Shenkenberg his comeuppance for scandalizing their congregation, but in the week leading up to the event, Meiselman’s delusions of grandeur repeatedly collide with reality, to tragic and hilarious effect. Landes succeeds in depicting the nuances of the religious community, though some of Meiselman’s more outlandish fantasies and flashbacks detailing sexual confessions to his therapist tread too closely to Portnoy’s Complaint territory. Fans of Shalom Auslander will appreciate this. (Mar.)