Publication Date: June 14, 2026
He had a one-way ticket to the top. Now, he’s sleeping in his childhood bed.
Math genius Charlie Garrity had a simple checklist: power, prestige, money. With an MIT Sloan MBA in his pocket and a dream job in the front office of the Los Angeles Dodgers, he was rounding the bases toward a perfect life. Then came the blindside.
With his rocket-like trajectory abruptly stymied, Charlie is forced to do the one thing he swore he would never do: move back in with his zany, chaotic, filter-free family. Between his wine-guzzling mother’s weekly allowance, his weed-loving father’s high-stakes business pitches, and his curmudgeonly grandfather’s constant grousing, Charlie’s life has become a documentary of errors-literally, thanks to his aspiring filmmaker brother. To make matters worse, his older sister tries to guilt-trip him into joining her dog-walking business, and his younger sister manipulates Charlie into posing as a Speedo- clad art model.
Charlie is desperate to reclaim his once-lofty status, but when a path back to the top forces a choice between his ambition and his ethics, he has to do the hardest math of his life. He knows what he wants-but is he ready to calculate what he actually needs?
Author Bob Marsocci introduces us to Charlie and his dysfunctional family as they attend Charlie’s MIT graduation in Charlie Goes Sideways. Embarrassing is too kind a word for what happened during his mom’s speech to the graduates and their families.
Unfortunately, Charlie’s life doesn’t go as planned when he’s let go from his dream job with the LA Dodgers. From there, his life continues to go downhill as he has to give up his apartment and move back home, deal with his family, get rid of his car because it’s too much to fix, and meet up with friends and colleagues who all seem to have their lives together. Multiple stories are told, and each one seems sadder than the last. There were also a lot of humorous moments throughout, although at the time they were hard to laugh at.
The story flows at a good pace, but it has a lot of slapstick humor. How Charlie deals with his family day to day isn’t what he expected after getting his MBA. His life finally takes a turn for the best, and he surprisingly ends up where he started. There is some closure since he seems to get his life back on track.
Charlie Goes Sideways is a satirical tale of how none of us would want our lives to turn out after the grueling years of a prestigious college MBA program.
Bob Marsocci is the author of two books: Charlie Goes Sideways, a contemporary fiction novel, and You Exhaust Me, A Clueless Guy’s Guide to Marriage, a nonfiction book. A former corporate communications executive, Bob spends his time (well, a good amount of time) writing. He is currently working on his next novel.
