In SHRINK THYSELF, a man decides to leave therapy and live the unexamined life. A noble goal, which would be even more noble if his former therapist (now his friend) didn’t turn out to be beyond inappropriate and his mother didn’t die in a way that would make Freud transfer to dental school.
While you're waiting for Amazon to deliver, please dine out, as I do regularly, on this absolute dream of a blurb from bestselling author and high-functioning anxiety laureate Scott Stossel:
"SHRINK THYSELF is hilarious. In Charlie Traub, the protagonist of this crackling novel, Bill Scheft has created a sad-sack hero with the exuberant narrative verve of a character out of Philip Roth or Saul Bellow (think Portnoy or Herzog). Fresh out of therapy with a psychologist who wants to become his friend, Traub endures a series of darkly comic misadventures--his mother's funeral alone is a small tour de force of humor and plot twisting--that will have you laughing and turning pages so frantically to find out what happens next that you may be surprised to discover, when you reach the end, that you've been moved by a story of remarkable soulfulness, warmth, and redemption.”
- Scott Stossel, editor of The Atlantic magazine and author of the New York Times bestseller MY AGE OF ANXIETY: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind
Still hungry? How about this rave from Foreword Reviews:
"With his sly social observations of this postmillennial world, a talent for nurturing his emotionally hemmed-in protagonist, a soupcon of Jewish angst, and a gift for wordplay -- 'My rate would jump Shylockingly' -- Scheft offers laugh-out-loud commentary on life, love and loneliness."
