What's Wrong with Dorfman?

This book is pretty good, but I'm not the author, so what do I know?
All seriousness aside, John Blumenthal has written a smart and funny book, with a main character with whom any reader can sympathize and identify.

Martin Dorfman is a down-on-his luck movie screenwriter who hasn't sold a script since Napoleon was a corporal. He wakes up, one morning, with a mysterious ailment for which his doctor is unable to find any cause. After 10s of thousands of dollars spent on x-rays, scans, and diagnostic procedures, Dorfman is no closer to finding out what ails him.

Through flashbacks, we learn of his neurotic, hypochondriac, physician father, from whom, we can see, he has acquired his own traits. To make things worse, the married Dorfman meets show more Delilah, a kindred spirit with whom he develops a coffee-shop relationship, creating a feedback loop that only serves to feed the beast consuming him from the inside out.

This book is wry, smart, and, at times laugh-out-loud funny. I recommend it highly.

Disclaimer: I was not given a free copy of this book by NetGalley, the publisher, or the author, in exchange for my honest review. show less

Dorfman is a screenwriter who has come down with a mysterious malady that medical science cannot diagnose. He also has a neurotic doctor father who was convinced that his children were afflicted with every possible disease, and a seriously frakked-up childhood, and all of that goes a long way toward answering the question: what’s wrong with Dorfman? I think this book would make a charming movie starring Steve Martin as the title character. As it is, it is a very readable book that injects new meaning into the term “dysfunctional family.”