Synopsis "Funny Things Happened: From Brighton to Boca (in English)"
THIS BOOK IS A HUMOROUS MEMOIR , COVERING 70 YEARS OF MY LIFE EXPERIENCES. FROM MY EARLY YEARS IN BROOKLYN TO FINALLY ARRIVING IN FLORIDA, MANY FUNNY INCIDENTS ARE REVEALED.Kirkus Review:A thousand comic anecdotes illuminate an ordinary life in this genial memoir.Debut author Karp, born in Brooklyn and now retired in Boca Raton, Florida, uses the bare bones of his upbringing, twomarriages, and careers in the garment industry, real estate, and insurance as a framework for his stories about assortedmisadventures. Episodes include youthful hijinks in his family’s Brighton Beach apartment building (“many complaintscame to my mother about her juvenile delinquent son flooding the basement with soapsuds”); pratfalls in the ArmyReserve (caught tanning himself with a reflecting sheet, the author was accused of flashing signals to Russiansubmarines); parenting tasks (“I took my drunk seven-year-old daughter home and certainly never told her mother”); aworkplace Heimlich maneuver (“A two-pound wedge of rare roast beef came flying out of his mouth and bounced alongthe floor like a hockey puck”); and romantic exploits as a rare and sought-after widower on the torrid Boca seniorsdating scene (“We certainly did not agree on political philosophy, and when she asked me about a second date, I told herthat I would be vacationing in North Korea.”) Famous faces make cameo appearances—pop singer Neil Sedaka, aboyhood friend; candidate Barack Obama, who shook Karp’s hand at a campaign rally; movie star Rex Harrison, whomKarp spied being carried out of a Madrid restaurant dead drunk. Most of the vignettes are wryly humorous, but somehave darker edges (“When they saw me, they stopped fighting, and when I realized that the man on top had a gun in hisback pocket, I jumped back in the car”), while others, like a scene of the author corralling strolling musicians to serenadehis wife, are tender and wistful. There’s not a lot of rumination in this album of breezy, cheerful, random snapshots, buttogether they add up to a vivid, warmhearted portrait of postwar Jewish-American life, full of hope and laughter.An endearingly picaresque set of family memories.
