Despite raising provocative questions about twinship, Jewish identity, family roles and betrayal, Steinberg’s attempt to...
Suspense writer Steinberg (Death in a City of Mystics, 1998, etc.) folds a missing person mystery into a Jewish multigenerational family history set in Boyle Heights, once a distinctly Jewish neighborhood in Los Angeles.
About to move into a Los Angeles retirement home, former activist lawyer Elaine is preparing her archives to donate to USC when she stumbles upon a business card from the private detective she worked with in her 20s, Philip Marlowe no less: They met when she was the cute, intellectual clerk in The Big Heat bookstore scene. Soon, 80-something Elaine is revving up a renewed search for her twin sister, Barbara, based on a name she finds scribbled on the back of Philip’s card: Kay Devereaux. Meanwhile, she is remembering her childhood. Steinberg’s Boyle Heights is the quintessential, bordering on stereotypical, early-20th-century Jewish-American ghetto. Elaine’s mother, an immigrant from Romania with a dramatic streak, and her father, a shoe salesman who had to quit high school despite his love of literature after his older brother died in World War I, head the cast of colorful relatives as Elaine’s stories pile on a glut of dramatic coincidences and family lore that may or may not be true. At the center of Elaine’s memories is her relationship with Barbara. As children, the twins were inseparable even though Barbara was social and lively, Elaine quiet and smart. By high school, the sisters were moving in different directions, Elaine toward scholarship and idealism, Barbara toward the Hollywood world of entertainment. They both loved the same boy, Danny, who loved both of them in different ways. Then, in 1939, after an event Elaine is loath to remember, Barbara disappeared.
Despite raising provocative questions about twinship, Jewish identity, family roles and betrayal, Steinberg’s attempt to combine a heartstring pulling, realistic family saga and film-noirish mystery-solving feels unsatisfying and slightly bipolar.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-6796-4374-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
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
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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