The Suburban You, Mark Falanga
The Suburban You, Mark Falanga
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The Suburban You
Reports from the Home Front

Author: Mark Falanga

Narrator: Jonathan Marosz

Unabridged: 6 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/04/2004


Synopsis

You are about to discover that living in the suburbs is a whole lot funnier than you ever thought possible. For this country’s 145,892,494 (give or take) suburbanites, Mark Falanga is an utterly deadpan (and thoroughly entertaining) spokesman.

Mark Falanga is a slick urban dweller, at the top of his game professionally, with a gorgeous corporate executive wife and a hip coterie in the coolest neighborhood in the city. But when baby makes three, Mark and his family enter the twilight zone called the suburbs, where public schools are good, many wives stay home, and children ride their tricycles in the driveway.

Nothing is the same ever again.

With the dry wit of David Sedaris, and Dave Barry’s love of the absurd, Falanga details his new, suburban landscape from the point of view of a bewildered but gung-ho everyman. From the complex political pecking order in the neighborhood, with its ultracompetitive block parties and its consuming holiday-card rivalry, to the surprises lurking on every corner—such as the twelve-year-old pyromaniac next door and the suspiciously broad-shouldered “lady” on the commuter train—The Suburban You describes in slyly understated prose the vicissitudes of life in the ’burbs.

About The Author

MARK FALANGA is vice president of Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc., a Chicago-based real estate corporation, and is a principal in his own real estate company. Falanga’s work has appeared in GQ, and he writes a regular column on fatherhood for Child magazine. HBO is developing a comedy pilot with Brad Grey Television based on The Suburban You. Falanga lives in the suburbs of Chicago with his wife and their two children.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Crysta on October 15, 2008

This was sitting next to Judith Matloff's awesome "Home Girl" at the library, so I picked it up, recognizing Falanga's name from his old Chicago Tribune column. The book was funny and parts made me giggle as I recognized my own city-to-suburb transition. However, I think my lack of kids hampered som......more

Goodreads review by Carol on December 22, 2008

Fairly funny!......more

Goodreads review by Bobbi on February 05, 2016

Not bad...not bad. Some very funny parts, but mostly very predictable.......more


Quotes

“The Suburban You is droll enough to put a smile on the most cynical urban puss. Falanga’s voice is winning and companionable and funny and manages to make such chores as painting his children’s bathroom ceiling into a prospect more daunting and heroic than painting the Sistine Chapel. It made me very happy to live in a city, but I certainly enjoyed the outing.” —Christopher Buckley, author of No Way to Treat a First Lady and Thank You for Smoking