The Unthinkable Thoughts Of Jacob Green (2005) - Plot & Excerpts
I think it’s safe to say teenage boys think about sex. A LOT. In fact, teenage boys think about sex so much and with such enthusiasm that teenage girls are often overridden around every bend. With teenage boys in mind, I have compiled a list of penis slang. This is by no means all-inclusive, but it should suffice for the task at hand. There’s Johnson and skin-flute and boner and anaconda and anal impaler. Bald-headed yogurt slinger and baloney pony and bratwurst and chubbie and cock and ding-a-ling and ding dong and dingis. John Thomas and joystick and knob and love stick and member and middle leg and Mr. Happy. Schlong and Schwartz and shaft and tallywacker and trouser snake and wang and weenie.If you add up all the slang terms (there’re 27) and then multiply this number by 15, you probably end up somewhere in the vicinity of how often teenage boys think about getting laid. That’s nearly 17 times an hour. Am I exaggerating? I wish I were. And it doesn’t really matter if your father is half-crazy and your mother decides to start boning her psychology professor, a teenage boy can still dream of a better life. Even if your nanny doesn’t feel the same way about you, you can still enjoy the view and keep the more X-rated thoughts to yourself and have wet dreams in the privacy of your bedroom.THE UNTHINKABLE THOUGHTS OF JACOB GREEN reminded me of a dysfunctional family on steroids. When I reached the end, I had developed an even greater appreciation for my own upbringing, and it was hard not for me to consider myself lucky. Sure, I could bemoan my own familial problems, or my own teenage drama (rather mild in comparison), or the skirmishes my brother and I experienced on multiple occasions, but none of those thoughts crossed my mind. Instead, amusement crossed my lips, as character after character acted out in the craziest manner, and I found myself hanging on for the ride.Cross-posted at Robert's Reads
It seems like the subject manner is mild-mannered, but in fact, it's awfully intense. To the point where I wanted to reach through the book and strangle some characters.It takes place in the 70's-80's, following a young Jewish boy, the middle child in a very Jewish family, growing from kid to adult. His father is some kind of theater-director/entertainer and his mother is/was a SAHM until she wants to go to college. And there's an older brother who's his best buddy, but grows more rebellious and treats him like an older brother does. Kinda like "The Wonder Years" without the Vietnam backdrop. But the big character is the father -- the overbearing, Woody Allen-loving, temper-tantrum-having, overall-horrible human being father. Example: the very first scene is a moving-in party, where he drags every member of his family out in front of everyone for huge embarrassing introductions, like singing and dancing monkeys, showing them off like part of an act. Example: his son has a learning disability, but the father won't accept that his son just isn't trying hard enough. He sings praises of him to other people, but when the doors are closed, he rants and raves like a sarcastic, insulting baby. His father goes ballistic as the son keeps screwing up the Bar Mitzvah thank you cards with each try, because of the pressure. This causes an intense blow-up in the middle of the book where the father finally gets some people standing up to him.The back of the book makes it seems like a dramedy, like "The Perks of Being a Wallflower". It's not. It's about a dysfunctional family, and a mentally abusive father, combined with some coming-of-age and Jewish themes. It's better than just "drunk dad beats his kid" a la Radio Flyer.
What do You think about The Unthinkable Thoughts Of Jacob Green (2005)?
An occasionally funny, but mostly disappointing first effort from Zach Braff’s older brother about a teenage boy and the pressures of school, sex, identity, family, and Judaism. The book sets out to use the main character's humorous and sometimes fanciful observations to expose a few life lessons, or at least entertainingly rehash some of the painful embarrassments of being a teenager. Braff succeeds early in doing so, but the father figure becomes so severe that he takes over the story, which I’m not sure the author intended. Unlike The Great Santini or This Boy’s Life, which insightfully mixed elements of (dark) humor into a teenage boy's life with an overbearing and violent father figure, Braff's inability to walk this line led me to pity, rather than root for, the main character. There’s certainly promise in Braff’s writing, and some of the funny and dramatic parts, when read alone, are done well. But overall, I’m not exactly sure what Braff was going for, and it’s not entirely clear to me that he knew either.
—Armand
Oh! Oh! Oh! I so enjoyed this book. Picture the Wonder Years, except it takes place in the 1970's and it's a Jewish family. The trials and tribulations of a young boy coming of age that lives under the roof of an overbearing father in which he can never stand up to his expectations. Jacob has an older brother that is quite the rebel. So, this leaves Jacob as being his father's hope for the perfect son. The unthinkable thoughts that jacob manifests in order to cope with all the pressure are absolutely hilarious. There is some mature sexual content and foul language in this book. I'd like to see a sequal to this book and see what else is next for Jacob.
—Claudia Getz
What a surprise this little gem of a book turned out to be. I didn't know what type of book I was even reading when I started. Based on the cover and the title, I was imagining a silly teenage book on par with I Love You, Beth Cooper and Youth in Revolt. What I got was a touching story of a young man struggling to find his identity while trying to protect himself from his father's frightening rages. The book is funny but it's also terribly upsetting at times. I've read a lot of books on abuse and this one tops the list for the accuracy of it's portrayal of Jacob's father. Joshua Braff avoids painting him as a monster with no redeeming qualities. He is shown as a man who loves his family, loves his wife, and loves God. He is also shown to be jealous of Jacob's gift, manipulative, controlling, unpredictable and violent. And if Jacob is going to make it out of the family in one piece, he is going to have to take a stand. I highly recommend this book.
—Badly Drawn Girl
