A sometimes-charming, sometimes-tedious Winesburg, Ohio–style look at the life of a synagogue.
Three generations of Jews clash in their search for fulfillment in this novel in stories from Taub, author of Prodigal Children in the House of G-d (2018).
When Arnold Kestenberg, the entrepreneurial founder of Kestenberg’s Car Service, can’t find a seat at his yeshiva student–dominated synagogue, he decides to start his own. After all, how hard can it be? And so Congregation Haverim Ahuvim is born, the Orthodox synagogue with a twist: It has no rabbi. As Arnold explains to his co-founders: “We will lead each other.…We will care for each other. This will be a synagogue of comrades, in the spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood.” The congregation is a success—sort of—creating a multigenerational community of people whose lives and families intersect over the decades. Their individual struggles represent the constant tension between tradition and modernity at play in Haverim Ahuvim—and in Judaism itself. There is Yehudah Ariel, the principal of the Torah and Midot Academy, the closest thing to a spiritual authority the synagogue possesses and a man still figuring life out. There is the boy—and later man—Yehoshua Weissman, who is forced to keep his sexual orientation secret from the congregation, though many people already know it. There is Yehuda’s daughter Braynah, an artist who decides to hold a retrospective of her work in the synagogue—and whose art becomes a method of preserving the past. Taub’s measured prose adeptly captures the personalities and worldviews of his characters: “Mame never used any of the cleansers and creams from the department or specialty stores for her face, either. There too, it was just plain soap. Not dish soap, of course, but hand and body soap. Mame’s face had been a testament to the wisdom of her practice.” The book is slower and less zany than it initially appears to be, and the lack of serious drama in the lives of several characters who temporarily receive the spotlight can make for dull moments. The author succeeds in immersing the reader in this very particular, very Jewish world, however, which seems to have been his goal. Those who are interested in the daily rhythms of such a community will not be disappointed.
A sometimes-charming, sometimes-tedious Winesburg, Ohio–style look at the life of a synagogue.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68114-524-2
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Anaphora Literary Press
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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