Parents Behaving Badly

Patrick Lawlor's sardonic tone adds an entertaining dose of edginess to this delightful satire about the perils of parenting and youth sports. With writing that doesn't flinch when talking about condoms, weed, and various forms of infidelity, his enthusiastic reading jumps into the fray without calling attention to his skills or performance. The novel, a fast-moving collection of wickedly funny vignettes, is oddly relaxing. Gummer understands parenting and the conflicts parents face as they simultaneously try to love their children, maintain the illusion of being world-class parents, and curb the irrepressible child within themselves that is never far from the surface. For anyone with children, it's a hilarious, uplifting reminder that we are never more human than when we are parents. T.W. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

January 24, 2011
In Gummer's humorous if subdued debut, a suburban Little League serves as the nexus for thwarted ambitions, competitive intrigues, marital rifts, and, as an afterthought, kids who might be interested in baseball. Ben Holden, recently returned to his California hometown from New York, becomes a reluctant coach, grappling with his late father's legacy as a revered high school athletic mentor and the ambivalence that comes with middle-aged parenting and a mature, mostly stable marriage. He's appealing and accessible, as are many of Gummer's cast of family members, friends and neighbors. There's the deftly rendered list of things Ben's sister prizes: "their McMansion in the tony, new and also curiously named CascadeForest development of Sacramento, her Lexus hybrid and his Prius, their Pottery Barn furnishings, her Tory Burch Shoes and matching handbags." But too often, these descriptions substitute for character development and depth, and while the slew of subplots—the most dramatic of which involves low-grade sexual tension between Ben and a sexy ultrasound technician—are entertaining, they can't mask the fact that the novel fails to really deliver on the promise of its title.