DID YOU HAVE THE LIFE YOU WANTED?

A Jewish woman from Brooklyn struggles through her first steps into adulthood in Simon’s introspective novel that probes the definition of a life worth living.

Anita Rappaport is a newly independent young woman in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville in 1968.When she becomes a victim of an attempted gang rape while in the field as a social-service caseworker, she reassesses everything in her life. Anita backpacks across Europe, and later bonds with her friends in a kind of quasi-group therapy; she also comes to terms with a childhood trauma. Overall, the novel travels across roughly a decade of Anita’s life, chronicling the beginnings of some key friendships she has with other women: Denise, her longtime pal turned roommate; Shirley, a single mother with whom she later starts a business; Cindy, a work friend with a deadbeat boyfriend; and Marilyn, a quiet and tragic figure who worked with Anita and Shirley at a publishing house. The concluding scenes, set in 1976,underline the importance of these friendships; Anita asks the book’s titular question to those close to her, leading to a bittersweet ending. The scenes set in Anita’s youth effectively mull over the meaning of life, while those set much later question whether she successfully led a meaningful existence. Although the narrative’s time jumps sometimes give the work a disjointed feel, each scene is sharply focused and often emotionally powerful. Vivid moments of sexism arise throughout, as when her male therapist condescendingly simplifies her trauma, or when a judge initially ignores her personalized wedding vows, opting instead to read standard ones first, containing the word obey. A creative soul, Anita is unsatisfied with her editorial jobs, but it’s only when she’s in her 60s that she pursues a master’s degree in writing, which serves as a powerful reminder that it’s never too late to pursue a dream.

A turbulent but often poignant fictional portrait of a life in progress.