Rockaway

April 15, 2013
A single, 34-year-old artist frets about her talent, nurses a drinking problem, and embarks on a nonrelationship with a man more than 20 years her senior in Ison’s thin third novel (after The List). When Sarah flees her clingy parents and stagnant life in Southern California to spend the summer of 2001 housesitting in Rockaway Beach, in the borough of Queens, New York, her future looks full of promise. With expensive tubes of paints and carefully stretched canvases in tow, she vows to dedicate her time to art. But after days (and too many pages) turn into weeks of staring at the walls and downing various alcoholic beverages, Sarah has nothing to show for her time but a pale sketch of a shell. A tentative affair with aging, kosher-keeping rocker Marty and a trip to see a friend in Connecticut (new mother Emily) prove equally unremarkable, except for a bizarre, out-of-place moment when Sarah is pressured to practice breastfeeding her friend’s child. By the end of this haphazard tale, readers will be wondering if Sarah has finally achieved her artistic breakthrough, or just a nervous breakdown after one too many glugs from a bottle of cooking sherry. Agent: Emma Sweeney, Harold Ober Associates.

March 15, 2013
A troubled woman from San Diego travels to Rockaway, N.Y., to make art and finds herself instead. Mumblecore was coined to describe a type of film often peopled with 20-something nonprofessional actors who portray inarticulate characters with low self-esteem, poor luck in love and difficulty growing up. This book is representative of contemporary fiction with similar tropes. At 35, Sarah is older than the typical mumblecore cohort--but how she struggles. When a dealer promises an exhibition, she quits her job in San Diego and moves East for the summer, taking up residence in her old friend Emily's grandmother Pearl's large home in Rockaway. Her plan is to escape her needy, aging parents and paint a show's worth of pictures. Nana Pearl is out of the house, recovering from hip-replacement surgery, but a Sri Lankan couple, Avery and Bernadette, remain as caretakers, their cooking and too-loud talk disturbing the fragile, guilt-ridden artiste. Sarah meets older men Julius and Marty, the former an uncle of Emily. Sarah goes out with Julius, a blowhard banker, and then with Marty, a self-absorbed old rock-and-roll type recently returned to his Jewish roots. Marty invites her to Passover with his orthodox friends and to Rye, N.Y., for a reunion concert with his old band. Sarah stays briefly with her friend, pregnant Emily, wife of a banker, who lives the life of a luxurious hippie on an estate in Connecticut. The resolution is consistent with the rest of the book: It is all about Sarah's feelings. Mumblecore fiction--a fiction of very low expectations--from Ison (The List, 2007, etc.), co-writer of the film Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead.

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