Sunflowers

There's nothing like a knock on the door at 3:00 a.m. to change your life forever. Gus Moore discovers how true this is when his ex-girlfriend blows in on an icy January night just long enough to dump "his problem" on the couch. From languid single slob to competent single parent, Gus's metamorphosis over the next six years is remarkable. All is going swimmingly for Gus and his son, Sam, until two women complicate their lives: Sarah, with whom Gus has an unsatisfactory friends-with-benefits relationship, and Maureen, his son's bipolar mother, who has decided she wants back into her child's life. Maureen's illness is a subtextual presence that eventually steers the course of the novel. Refreshingly, Gus does not have the stereotypical Mr. Mom awkwardness of being a single parent (although he does "outsource the Jesus stuff" to the mother across the street), and there is no predictable "happy couple works it out" ending.