It's 1976 in Marin County. The Serial was serialized, a 500-1000 word chapter every week in the Pacific Sun - a Marin County weekly, and later the SF Chronicle too.
Some of the humor still works but it also get old and repetitive and maybe too insider nostalgic. But it's a fun quick read. It's a fast paced soap opera, a sendup of the the self-help/human-potential scene, open marriages, permissive parenting, cocaine, hot-tubbing, and the builtin irony of being competitively liberal (naming children Che) while just behind the curtain you're actually competitively rich and privileged.
It was fun looking up or being reminded of all the brand names, places, and institutions of the time. Here's my glossary:
Brown Jordan - outdoor patio furniture for tasteful suburban affluence
Salton Hot Tray -- Electric warming tray (Harvey uses it to dry socks)
Waterbed - lots of comic affect (getting in/out with sore back)
Danskin leotards - shows how active and fit you are while you smoke and drink wine
Cutty - Cutty Sark, seemed like the drink of choice
Pepperidge Farm Milanos - sophisticated cookies, impresses the neighbors
Tiger's Milk - some kind of energy drink or bar. It impresses people
Wine - lots of wine. Wine wine, the women drink wine
Virginia Slims - "I am liberated while I smoke"
Dunhills - I have something better than your Virginia Slims
Sominex - Helps you sleep
Mentholatum - using this shows you uphold some traditions
EST - if you haven't done this you should just move to Daly City
Synanon - EST on steroids. Shave your head. Great quote: “... the games are what really did it for me. I mean what you’ve got is this whole community of people who care enough to tear you apart.”
Valium - doesn't mix with Cutty
Librium - doesn't mix with Valium
Real places and what they mean:
Mill Valley - Main setting, makes you feel slightly inadequate living here
Tiburon/Belvedere - Envy envy envy
Fairfax - counterculture creds. Hard to top.
Bolinas - tops Fairfax. People from Fairfax like to name drop Bolinas as often as possible
San Rafael - where all the good bars are
Falkirk - Best place to renew your wedding vows
Daly City - Suggest someone should live here, ultimate insult
Some quotes:
About teen character Joan (Kate & Harvey's daughter) who disappeared to Amsterdam to find herself. Kate reports: “Joan says she was hanging out in the Vondell Park and all of a sudden it hit her: zap! She knew what she wanted to do with her life: be a dental hygienist.”
Joan's ex boyfriend Spenser telling Harvey that Joan is in Amsterdam: "She's in Amsterdam. It says right there on the postcard, you dig?" Spenser, like Joan, had gone to Tam High. "Amsterdam's not in Holland, it's in Europe."