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YEARS OF DREAMS by Gloria Goldreich

YEARS OF DREAMS

by Gloria Goldreich

Pub Date: April 1st, 1992
ISBN: 0-316-31937-6
Publisher: Little, Brown

Goldreich, whose other novels (Mothers, 1989, etc.) are chock- full of vacant, if nobly emoting, characters squashy with sentiment, offers more of the same in this tale about the deep friendship of four Manhattan-based women from the 1960's through 1983. Through the years, the four shoot into fame, fortune, and/or fulfilling career while locating love—and themselves—in history: ``[the beginning of the 60's] was our decade—the decade of youth and hope, the decade when we'd turn the world around.'' (They tend to talk like that.) Among the four who gather for the first time—a time of shock- -to hear reports of the assassination of JFK: Merle, the hostess, whose house was ``scented with wealth,'' whose husband, kind and loving, was nonetheless a heavy, domination-wise; Rutti, poverty- stricken wife of deteriorating Werner, both Holocaust victims; Nancy, whose handsome Israeli physician husband Dov, has no interest in her potential career; and Anne, who is determined to earn an M.D. The women will find liberation—Nancy through divorce, Merle through subterfuge, and, after Werner's sacrificial death in Israel, Rutti during widowhood. But it is Anne who will shock even her friends—with an abortion and then later a pregnancy, father unknown for some time. Rutti is an internationally famous artist; Merle is an internationally famous violinist and composer; Dr. Anne and psychologist Nancy also do well. New loves (and two husbands) appear; children mature; there are deaths and crises. And at the close, the quartet will weep together—in deathless friendship. High-minded corn, buttery smooth and irresistible to Goldreich's definitive readership.