Town House - by Tish Cohen (Paperback)

About the Book

A hilarious and poignant debut novel of romance, fresh beginnings, and an unlikely hero faced with his greatest fear--stepping outside.

Book Synopsis

Jack Madigan should be leading an enviable life. He's the sole heir of a '70s rock icon. He lives with his retro-obsessed teenage son, Harlan, in a once-magnificent Boston town house. But now 36, Jack's painting career is buckling under a raging case of agoraphobia. And when the foreclosure notice arrives, Jack must face losing the only home he's ever known--and his only safe zone. When Jack's ex-wife announces that Harlan would be better off living with her and her vitamin-enriched fiancé, Jack has to figure out how to deter the perky, inexperienced real-estate agent, hold on to his house, keep his son at home, and--through the tenacity of the little girl next door--finally step out onto the sidewalk.

Fox 2000 swooped in to pre-empt the film rights while Town House was still on submission to publishers. Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions is set to produce the movie and Pulitzer Prize-winning screenwriter Doug Wright (Memoirs of a Geisha) is adapting the screenplay. A book with the ability to both entertain and move us, Town House is a smart, acerbic novel bursting with heart and quirky charm.

Review Quotes

"Its official title is Town House, but in Hollywood they're already calling Tish Cohen's novel About a Girl." - The Globe and Mail
"TOWN HOUSE is a poignant, acerbic and charming novel with real heart. Make room on your bookshelf for Tish Cohen." - Barbara Delinsky, New York Times bestselling author of A WOMAN BETRAYED
"For someone who can't leave the house, Jack Madigan is a heck of a guy. Town House is everything you could ask for in a novel: touching, wry, bewitching, eccentric, and riveting to the end. I love this book and eagerly await Tish Cohen's next." - Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants
"A constellation of characters whose idiosyncrasies make the family of Little Miss Sunshine look like Ozzie and Harriet." - Kirkus Reviews
"In her first novel, Tish Cohen has written an original portrait of a pathetic man that is at times sardonically comic and humanly poignant. Never straying into sentimentality or veering off course into ludicrousness, Cohen's Jack Madigan is a three-dimensional, albeit anomalous, lost soul of our modern, twisted, fractured, society." - Rex Pickett, New York Times bestselling author of Sideways
"...sardonically comic and humanly poignant." - Rex Pickett, New York Times bestselling author of SIDEWAYS
"A dead rock star who still haunts the place; his agoraphobic son who must not only leave his father's house but sell it; the real estate agent who couldn't sell Shangri-La; and the neighbor child who visits through a hole in wall and thinks she's a dog. You'd have to look awfully hard to find a novel with a bigger cast of memorable characters than Tish Cohen manages to squeeze into one Boston Town House." - Philip Beard, author of Dear Zoe and Lost in the Garden