You think you already know Philip Lach­man, the tall Jew whose short his­to­ry author Den­nis Danziger chron­i­cles in his affa­ble new nov­el. You’ve seen Lach­man on a sit­com, cer­tain­ly. He’s the Cos­by-esque father fig­ure whose kids see­saw between fight­ing him and lov­ing him. He’s the Fra­zier-esque divor­cé whose ex-wife is dri­ving him insane. He’s the Sein­feld-esque bum­bler who can’t get through a day with­out insult­ing some­one. He’s the Kot­ter-esque Eng­lish teacher who con­nects with his stu­dents and irri­tates the prin­ci­pal. Sad­dled with all of these attrib­ut­es, it’s no won­der Lachman’s hav­ing a hard time of it. His prayers to God, each of which start ​“Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, Cre­ator of it all,” and end some­thing like, ​“let me win just one hear­ing in fam­i­ly court,” along with a dec­la­ra­tion by chap­ter five that he’s going to find some­one to mar­ry with­in a year, seem like a set­up for a per­fect must-see-TV sea­son. But just as you set­tle in, expect­ing the nov­el to take on a 23-minute plot­line, Danziger does some­thing unex­pect­ed. He deft­ly brings Lach­man back from the sit­com abyss, and pulls off a com­pelling and sur­pris­ing­ly heart­warm­ing work of fiction.