Praise for
Adriane on the Edge:
(Berkley Books)
"Mandelbaum has a gift for turning tragedy into a strange kind of comedy; his tales of Adriane's often bumbling exploits are both touching and amusing.
Highly recommended for all public libraries."
—Amanda Glasbrenner
Library Journal
"Mandelbaum, like novelist Anne Tyler, is fond of using Baltimore as a setting, homing in on endearingly eccentric characters, and suffusing the whole with a gentle whimsy. Rendering his own skewed version of the chick-lit formula, Mandelbaum presents this
highly amusing, wholly entertaining novel-in-stories detailing the crackpot (mis)adventures of Adriane Gelki... Readers will be delighted as she embarks on a disastrous hunt for the perfect bagel during a blizzard in Montreal and disrupts a meeting of the Greater Baltimore Polyamory Society on New Year's Eve.
Long live Adriane!"
—Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist
“Teeming with energy and even moments of insanity, Adriane’s escapades are fraught with true human emotion…. There is a plaintiveness and vulnerability here…. Mandelbaum is definitely in touch with mind, body and soul.”
—Angela Stubbs
bookslut.com
Praise for
Garrett in Wedlock:(Berkley Books)
"[O]ften hilarious...a fittingly complex portrait of a family that, in its branching byways, resembles what families really are."
—Mark Rozzo
L.A. Times Book Review
“In the author's hands, this kind of marriage becomes a metaphysical road trip.”
—Carolyn See
The Washington Post
“[M]uch of the book reads as though it's been culled from Celebrated Literature of the Oughts. The novel-in-stories format evokes
Zadie Smith's
White Teeth, aromatic scenes in modern India bring to mind Pulitzer Prize-winner
Jhumpa Lahiri, and Garrett himself might have been a bit player in
Jonathan Franzen's
The Corrections before landing this, a starring role in his own spin-off series. But another thing it has in common with those other books is that it's an entertaining, insightful read.”
—Jessica Pressler
Philadelphia Weekly
Editor’s Picks
"...unfolds gracefully as nuanced and memorable characters confront a variety of family-related crises. If
Anne Tyler just came to mind, you wouldn't be too far off the mark."
—Baltimore Magazine
“Mandelbaum's explorations into the human heart are well worth the read.”
—Donna Marchetti
Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Entertaining, moving... Mandelbaum has a great knack for well-placed humor. The lives in
Garrett in Wedlock exemplify the hoops that we often jump through to make things work. This, however, is one circus act all readers can take part in.”
—Angela Stubbs
bookslut.com
“Paul Mandelbaum is that rarest of birds: a terrific comic literary writer...satirical and big-hearted, merciless and tender.... Think
Anne Tyler and
Evelyn Waugh, add a good dash of
Lorrie Moore, and you’ll get an idea of the pleasures lurking in these pages.”
—Michelle Huneven, author of Jamesland
"[A] rich cross section of contemporary family life, ruled by chaos theory and by genuine love."
—DeWitt Henry
Ploughshares
“[A] deft debut … witty … nuanced … gratifying … These eleven inter-locking tales marry well.”
—Kirkus
Paul Mandelbaum's fiction has appeared in The Barcelona Review, Colorado Review, DoubleTake, Glimmer Train Stories, Harvard Review, The Massachusetts Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review and other journals and has received a James Michener - Copernicus Society of America Award. Garrett in Wedlock won the 2005 Baltimore Book Festival Award for Fiction. He and his wife live in Culver City, CA.
