The Unthinkable Thoughts Of Jacob Green (2004)

Braff's elegiac tale of a mid-'70s Jersey boyhood shares at least one attribute—a psychologically abusive father—with brother Zach's zanier movie, Garden State. But Unthinkable's paterfamilias, the smothering, histrionic narcissist Abram Green, is more richly awful: Every member of the clan -- from wistful shiksa wife Claire to rebellious firstborn Asher to our teenage narrator Jacob -- is expected to perform in Dad's nonstop ego cabaret. As Braff chronicles the inevitable implosion in brisk, readable prose, his texture (if not his Roth-ish sexual realism) recalls very good young-adult fiction. Perhaps that's because he doesn't develop so much as defend poor besieged Jacob, who learns cruel lessons in the limits of love -- and not much else.