Word: friedmanly
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...MOTHER'S KISSES, by Bruce Jay Friedman. The author of the widely praised Stern faced even worse problems than most second novelists in confronting his cult. But Kisses is as funny as its predecessor on the same subject: a man dominated by a driving mother...
...MOTHER'S KISSES by Bruce Jay Friedman. 286 pages. Simon & Schuster...
Seventeen-year-old Joseph, the beleaguered anti-hero of Bruce Jay Friedman's second novel, is subjected to nearly as many adolescent indignities as his Biblical namesake had to suffer. Instead of being tossed down a well by envious brothers, this Joseph is tyrannized by his mother Meg, a bosomy termagant with some of the less attractive qualities of Medea, Medusa and Jocasta...
...Author Friedman, 34, and an editor of adventure magazines, employs a distinctive, metaphor-strewn prose whose characteristic sound is that of a 33-r.p.m. record being played at 333. Anxiety rides every page, and the wit is wounding...
...Mother's Kisses is an even funnier book than Stern, Friedman's highly praised first novel, but it is somewhat less well organized and smaller in scope. And it is partly a product of cannibalization-several long sections are based on earlier short stories-raising a question of Friedman's ability to break new ground. His Stern was fresh, vigorous and unsettling. A Mother's Kisses fully merits only the two latter adjectives. But few other current novels can claim as much...