Why Aren’t You Smiling? (Audible Audio Edition) Alvin Orloff Jake Lewis Audible Studios Books
Download As PDF : Why Aren’t You Smiling? (Audible Audio Edition) Alvin Orloff Jake Lewis Audible Studios Books
Growing up in the 1970s has never before been portrayed with such delightful ludicrousness and heartrending tenderness as in Why Aren't You Smiling? When teenage Leonard decides to quit being a Dweeb and instead join the Burnouts, his "good kid" persona is abandoned as he embarks on a comically painful journey of self-discovery through his unconventional friendship with Rick, an older Jesus freak barefoot hippie. The farcical parallel story of how Irving Mandelbaum from Los Angeles transmogrifies into rag-tag cult leader Rick of The Forever Family paints an indelible portrait of California during one of its most preposterous eras.
Why Aren’t You Smiling? (Audible Audio Edition) Alvin Orloff Jake Lewis Audible Studios Books
Very silly story.Product details
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Why Aren’t You Smiling? (Audible Audio Edition) Alvin Orloff Jake Lewis Audible Studios Books Reviews
This author is such a fresh voice with a rich emotional context. It's rare to experience a story so well-crafted that balances the horror of an ill-fated, adolescent crush with humor and wisdom. This is not pulp, it is literature and it's for everyone who loves. I have just ordered his other two books.
Orloff is a king of funny anecdotes and his writing is so crisp that WHY AREN'T YOU SMILING? was an absolute pleasure to read. The concept for the story is fantastic Boy confuses sexual urges for spiritual enlightenment and thinks Jesus might be the answer to becoming normal. I particularly liked Leonard's pragmatic atheist parents and Orloff really knocks the final chapters of the book out of the ballpark. Orloff's wholesome sensibility really shines through.
This hilarious coming-of-age story has one of the most adorably geeky protagonists I've ever read. Utterly charming. (I listened to the audio book, and thought the narrator, Jake Lewis, did a great job.)
Alvin Orloff really nails the neuroses of lonely teenage years in this book. His depiction of fussy, insecure Leonard is bitingly hilarious and accurate. My mustachioed, fourteen-year-old self would definitely have had an unrequited, unspoken crush on Leonard if he had sat next to me in history class (unless he came to school in a dancing bear shirt or asked me about Jesus. Then it would be over.)
This is the first book I have read by Alvin Orloff, and it was so good, I am definitely going to read the rest of his novels.
i loved this book. it is a tight, fast read with at least one hilarious moment per page. for me, the author's choice of words to describe the protagonist's trials and tribulations is what makes it so damned good. clever but not too clever. it sort of reminds me of that show "freaks and geeks", the highly underrated showtime series about growing up in the 70's.
God, Love, and the meaning of life are repeatedly under fire when leonard, an earnest young goober, takes a brave leap out of geekdom and into stoner-land. fueled by debilitating crushes, leonard inadvertently pushes himself (and the reader) further toward the realization that behind every "movement" lies hypocracy, and maybe things aren't so bad after all.
This book is a real gem...the writing is seamless and Orloff has such great comic skill and timing. Leonard is just the most loveable dweeb and his brother and the Jesus freaks are so entertaining and smartly drawn, not to mention Leonard's parents--and Rick's! I also like how Orloff peppers his story with his encyclopedic knowledge of Christian heresies and pop culture. I always learn a bunch of stuff just from looking up all the many references to myriad obscure but important philosophies whenever I read his work. Comedy aside, there's a real sanity to Orloff's world view that allows for hilarity and wisdom both. He's an impressive talent, there's no one else quite like him. Definitely highly recommend this and all his other books. He's a great storyteller, never a dull moment.
This book caught me off guard and proceeded to take me by surprise. I was in the middle of a book borrowed from the library - A Man of Parts, by David Lodge - which turned out to be an engrossing, frankly sexual, and intellectually thrilling account of H. G. Wells' life, wonderfully written as a biography cum novel. I only meant to read the first few pages of Why Aren't You Smiling, but I found I could not put down Alvin Orloff's book. It had an effect on me I was quite unprepared for.
It was every bit as charming and amusing as I had expected, but it was a good deal more also. Even in the midst of what might read as a satire on adolescent yearnings, there is a quality of intimacy, of unabashed confession, of a shared idealism that is ultimately neither denied nor repented. I thought I was buying a witty, stylish book of manners, but what I got was a meditation on love.
Other readers, I suspect, will have a whole range of reactions. That's the other big surprise this book is deep enough and charged enough to be different things to different people. This is true down to the last paragraph. I imagine people will close this book with interpretations almost the exact opposite of mine, and still be just as validated by the material. And that's a damn good trick.
Very silly story.
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