(Coming Soon)
Raising Philip
by Paul Alan Ruben
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Book One: Journey Through the Rabbit Hole
Book Two: Family in a Grove
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Book One: Journey Through the Rabbit Hole
Book Two: Family in a Grove
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Synopsis
At fifty-eight, Philip Karlovitz is alone, having just been informed by his wife, Sunny, that she and their twenty-four-year-old son, Markus, who is living with them, are leaving him. His despair deepens. He wants his family back! There is no one to turn to for consolation: not his estranged father, his insipid brother, his disengaged colleagues at the New York City community college where he teaches English, and most certainly not his student, Mariel Reyes, whose attraction to him is more than passing. No matter. He is persistent. He wants his family back. And if not his wife, at least his son. Along the way, Philip discovers that the more he learns about them (including Sunny’s two year affair, and Markus’s drug use) the more he realizes that he is victimized, not so much by what he never knew, but by what he thought he did, about them and himself.
At its core, Raising Philip examines family and identity. It asks, what does family mean to Philip, Sunny and Markus? And what do these three people mean to one another and themselves. It is about the particular ties that bind family — inextricably linked to one another by blood — and what occurs to those ties when they are bloodied from within.
At fifty-eight, Philip Karlovitz is alone, having just been informed by his wife, Sunny, that she and their twenty-four-year-old son, Markus, who is living with them, are leaving him. His despair deepens. He wants his family back! There is no one to turn to for consolation: not his estranged father, his insipid brother, his disengaged colleagues at the New York City community college where he teaches English, and most certainly not his student, Mariel Reyes, whose attraction to him is more than passing. No matter. He is persistent. He wants his family back. And if not his wife, at least his son. Along the way, Philip discovers that the more he learns about them (including Sunny’s two year affair, and Markus’s drug use) the more he realizes that he is victimized, not so much by what he never knew, but by what he thought he did, about them and himself.
At its core, Raising Philip examines family and identity. It asks, what does family mean to Philip, Sunny and Markus? And what do these three people mean to one another and themselves. It is about the particular ties that bind family — inextricably linked to one another by blood — and what occurs to those ties when they are bloodied from within.