Grandma Gets Laid

Lonely Long Island divorcée Barbara, aka the titular Grandma, is not especially put together, despite a post-divorce facelift. She also has herpes and a serious martini problem. While in a drunken stupor, she picks up a French waiter, Jacques, a wannabe painter with terrible body odor. She goes home with him to his Bowery apartment and experiences “smelly sex” (and his “enormous hooked penis”). The encounter eventually sets her off on a Manhattan odyssey of debauchery that worries her already disapproving daughter. Shakin writes in a jazzy, ’60s-ish style that sustains his unpleasant visions of an aging woman’s hopeless life. He substitutes barbed slapstick for plot, but Barbara does find her way in a manner that turns out to be oddly heartwarming. (June)