FAR TO GO

From the big bestselling author of Lasting Treasures (1993), among many others, a Jewish family saga with a pace like Chinese water torture. A Jewish mother worries for six decades—and with reason. During the Depression, Fran marries Bernie Goldman, an unemployed boy from New York, and wonders how they will get by. Then it's WW II and she worries that Bernie will have to go and fight, so she has two baby girls to keep him on the home front. Then Fran gets shot in the back—while worrying about a Japanese friend—and it's hit-or-miss whether she'll ever walk again. She recovers but Bernie dies an untimely death and Fran returns to her native Georgia to work in her father's store. She builds the store into a successful chain and falls in love with Craig, a nice Jewish widower who takes her to Paris. But she lets him go because her children are growing up, and, boy-oh-boy, is she worried: One daughter leaves law school to marry a failed musician who lets her support him and also do all the housework; the other daughter gives up dreams of journalistic glory to marry a wealthy boy, half Jewish, who is murdered by his brother (that ``Cain and Abel schtik''). Years later, Fran gives Craig up again because she's worried about her grandchildren: A granddaughter has become a Madonna-like singer who doesn't wear a bra and never calls home. Fran's best friend is a gay man named Robin, and when he gets a bad cold...well, we all know what that means: more worrying. A relentlessly linear ``and then'' novel—as in first they ate eye-round; and then they watched television; and then they got a divorce. Disappointingly flat.