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
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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
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