Town House by Cohen
Town House (2007)
by Tish Cohen
276 pages - HarperCollins
Jack is in his middle-thirties, and living off the royalties of his father's recordings, a rocker in the Ozzy Osbourne or Alice Cooper mould. He's divorced and still living in his childhood home, a townhouse in Boston which he shares with his teenage son and a cat deformed by an accident. And he has severe agoraphobia, to the point where he is afraid to venture out to the sidewalk in front of his house. He's pushed out of his comfort zone when he can no longer make his mortgage payments and the bank decides to sell his house from underneath him.
I decided to read this book without knowing too much about it. It was featured in one of those occasional lists of recommendations the library puts out, and I thought to myself, 'Hmm, a book about the son of a rock star who never goes out of his house, written by someone living in Toronto, sounds interesting.' Unfortunately it's really pretty bad. I guess this is what they call 'commercial fiction', and it turns out that the movie rights were sold for the novel even before it got a publishing deal. I also looked at the cover art and thought 'Hmm, it looks a tiny bit like a chick lit novel, but it can't be, right, with the story about a guy and his son, and rock music, old houses, etc... But I think this actually comes pretty close, as it turns out that Jack's passion is creating paint shades for interior decorating(!) and the son is so obsessed with trashy 70s fashions and accessories that from the way he dresses and acts, even an anti-bullying workshop might take time out to beat him up.
I think this book could have been successful if it was just more something. Maybe more funny. Or more caustic. More brief. More in-depth. Everything's really shallow and lacking in weight (especially for a novel about a hardcore agoraphobic, who you would think would be tortured with self-loathing, or loathing the world, or something), and I have to agree with the amazon reviewer (one of the few reviewers out there who I assume isn't a friend of the author) who says it's basically 'television in book form'.