Funny Accent: A Novel

By Barbara Shulgasser-Parker

Book Overview

Funny, sophisticated and fiercely intelligent, 32-year-old Anna Schopenhauer has one weakness: men old enough to be her father. Heading home to Scarsdale for her father's 70th birthday party, she... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312300433
• ISBN13: 9780312300432
• Release Date: June 2002
• Publisher: Picador
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.6" x 0.6" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Funny That Way

I enjoyed FUNNY ACCENT a great deal, although I have an earlier edition than the one pictured here, one whose cover sports Saul Steinberg's photo of an "Intellectual Couple" wearing paper masks that make them look like Mr. and Mrs. Peanut. Anna is a wonderful creation, she is a free lance writer in Chicago who publishes a story in the prestigious Atlantic Monthly, called FUNNY ACCENT. First we get the story (which she has called, "Funny Accent"), then we get to hear the repercussions of what happens to her once the story, with its revelations of her own personal life and that of her Lithuanian-American family, gets around. Anna is drawn to older men, some of them much much older than herself, and she attributes this to having been molested as a teen by a family friend called Misha. While he worked slowly and thoroughly, seducing her gently, he drew the line at having physical sex with her, and finally she threw herself at him and was rejected. By then she was twenty and too old for the creep, whom she now saw at family gatherings dancing with a young girl of thirteen, the same age she had been when she had become his prey. "He leaned toward the girl and his profile disappeared into her hair. He was whispering and she, her hand cupped over her mouth, was giggling." The story gets complicated by Anna's other entanglements. She is living with a playwright called Gregory who's not only a Dentile, but a drunk. She is carrying on sort of a Madame de Stael flirtation with an internationally celebrated novelist from Chicago who will make readers think instantly of a thinly disguised Saul Bellow, pretentious, four times married, a perfectionist in his writing and a wild man in his personal life. In addition, once Anna's parents get a copy of the ATLANTIC, they are shocked and dismayed to find out that it is through this vehicle that their daughter is making what amounts to a cry for help. Were they so self absorbed that they failed to see their dear Misha was making advances to Anna when she was a mere 13? Anna's mom, Sonia, in fact, has had a flirtation going on with Misha herself. He once asked her to marry him, yet she was already together with Max so it didn't happen. Finally, Misha himself is heard from. Anna gets a call from him saying, "I've read your story." What happens next is beyond your wildest dreams! Shulgasser Parker is a master novelist and will keep your imagination twitching as she brings us closer and closer to the insidious, glorious heartbeat of real life. She divulges the puzzling inner workings of an immigrant family, who, having escaped the Kosovo ghetto find themselves still at odds with mainstream US society. Misha is a memorable creation. Like the character Marcello Mastroianni played in PRET A PORTER (the Altman movie written by Shulgasser Parker) he is a charming man in late middle age who commits some reprehensible acts, but for whom he cherish a special fondness nevertheless--a mischievous rogue we can't

Sparsely eloquent. A book ripened near perfection.

Barbara Shulgasser-Parker writes a novel seemingly devoid of extras. No extraneous jabber to divert you from her prose. No inessential thoughts that clutter her focus...Whether her point is important probably lies somewhere with her subject. Since I don't care a whit about a woman drawn to her father's agemate, the substance of the novel came from a masterful ability to shake all the extra words off a page. What remains is a delight for the weekend socialogist...complex, delicious, insightful and succinctly robust.