Luncheonette: A Memoir by Steven Sorrentino

­There was some real charm to this memoir of a young man barely getting his life started in NYC, who is forced to take over the family business in New Jersey after his father falls ill. However, what dragged the book down was the endless self-pity in which Sorrentino wallowed. It got tiring hearing over and over and over again how sad he was, how he never reached out to his father, how sick he was of the same routine and faces and sandwiches. It all ties up rather neatly at the book’s end but by then it was a task to get there. (from '05 list)