Winner of the Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel, Minyan is both bittersweet and hilarious in a way that hurts to laugh. It is the tale of Norbert Wilner, a man who has mastered the art of arrested development who, at 37, is still single and living in New York City, surrounded by the Jewish guys he grew up with in Jersey. They are all searching for God, women, and most of all, a good pastrami-on-rye with spicy brown mustard, a side of potato salad and a cream soda.

Bernstein is a Hindu, Greenblatt's a Sufi, Weissbaum worships Willie Mays, and nobody likes Finkelstein, the big-shot lawyer...