I Should Have Known Better

Fifty years of love, booze, marriage, fatherhood, and near-misses - narrated by a man whose inner cross-examiner never rests. A witty, wrenching memoir-novel about the lifelong art of almost getting it right.Phil Green is a functionally dysfunctional everyman, bumbling his way through a successful life while an internal inquisitor cross-examines him at every turn. Across fifty years - the fevered Sixties, intoxicating affairs, two marriages, fatherhood, chancy careers, alcoholism, and cancer - Phil keeps trying to do the next right thing, even when confidence about what's right proves torturously elusive. Somewhere between Portnoy without the complaint and Adrian Monk without the crimes, his self-examining ruminations turn regret into reflection and offer wry, humane insight into love, family, and the rightness of fit. You don't have to be neurotic or a baby boomer to recognize yourself in Phil - though either helps. By the author of Onederland and The Reluctant Guru of Alphabet City.