Grandma Gets Laid  E-mail this product to a friend

A delicious, raunchy, outrageous satire, it will have you laughing out loud, wondering what could possibly come next, while reflecting so many aspects, strivings, and incongruities of our contemporary culture.

“Lonely Long Island divorcée Barbara, aka the titular Grandma, is not especially put together, despite a post-divorce facelift. She also has herpes and a serious martini problem. While in a drunken stupor, she picks up a French waiter, Jacques, a wannabe painter with terrible body odor. She goes home with him to his Bowery apartment and experiences “smelly sex” (and his ‘enormous hooked penis’). The encounter eventually sets her off on a Manhattan odyssey of debauchery that worries her already disapproving daughter. Shakin writes in a jazzy, ’60s-ish style that sustains his visions of an aging woman’s hopeless life, but Barbara does find her way in a manner that turns out to be oddly heartwarming.” —Publishers Weekly

“Let it be said at once that this may not be a book for everyone, but if you’re up (or down) to hip, wild, weird smart-ass-fast mouth, and into off-the-wall offensive humor, some of it laugh out loud, Ken Shakin’s third fiction foray into dysfunction is an absolute hoot. To judge from the language and lingo here—cruel, bitchy repartee, outrageous puns, a plethora of colorful cursing, madcap metaphors, delicious double entendres, howlingly funny dialect and fanciful drug slang—it’s safe to assume that Shakin is one smart, inventive cookie, with a fabulous ear for delivering a gnomic put down. His story, satiric as it is, also happens to be oddly moving. You don’t often get stand up like this sitting down, any more. Take a break from those who take themselves seriously while ruining the world and give Grandma a tumble. “ —The Independent