Despite its rush to the end, this novel delivers poignant universal truths about familial love and conflict in a story that...
This Passover, Sylvia Gold has only one thing on her mind: how can she impress her youngest daughter Becca’s new beau and his family, an old-money banking dynasty that dates back to New York’s gilded age?
For many mothers it would have been enough to have three healthy, successful grown children, two of whom have followed in their father’s footsteps and pursued careers in medicine. It would have been enough to have an adoring husband who finds her social-climbing antics endearing. And it would have been enough to have a beautiful home in Greenwich, Connecticut, and want for nothing. But Sylvia has never been one to say dayenu, the traditional Passover prayer of gratitude and contentment. The neurotic matriarch works herself into a tizzy to win over potential in-laws Edmond and Ursella Rothchild and their boorish son, Henry. This does not sit well with daughter Sarah, whose blue-collar boyfriend, Joe, has always been treated like chopped liver. Novelist Janowitz (Lonely Hearts Club, 2015, etc.) adds to the family drama by setting places at the Seder table for wayward son Gideon and his surprise fiancee, Malika, who's African-American, and for Joe’s boisterous mother, Valentina, whose husband is up the river—and not the Nile. With an impeccable eye for detail, Janowitz skillfully creates scenarios and relationships so authentic that they're simultaneously hilarious and cringe-worthy. Equally compelling is the cast of emotionally complex, nuanced characters who are lovable even at their most exasperating. The only shortcoming with this dramedy is that it finishes too quickly, the conclusion reading more like a chapter ending than the wrap-up this tale deserves.
Despite its rush to the end, this novel delivers poignant universal truths about familial love and conflict in a story that will have readers eagerly turning every delicious page. Thoroughly kosher.Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-00787-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
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