Breakfast At Noon

In this essay collection of midlife cares and craziness, C. R. Yeager takes us on a Tilt-A-Whirl ride of suburbia with his wife and adopted Chinese daughter. The banshees, as he calls them, provide ample opportunity for wise buffoonery, wearing 'mankiller' shoes that could "devour Simon Cowell," playing with dolls that would frighten Godzilla, and generally diverting life into a mine shaft. En route he also turns his attention to modern inconveniences (smartass cars, feral pets) and homesteading ("A lunchbox has more storage than our house"), mortality awareness ("whacking you in the face like a rake you stepped on"), and in-laws that show up unannounced "as though returning from a stint in Uruguay." Fractious and poignant, delighting in language and deploring contingency, Breakfast At Noon: Backwards in the 'Burbs is a dim sum of sweet and sour and very, very real. Adding to the fun are ten cartoons by award-winning illustrator Thomas Zahler.