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L.C. IS THE GREATEST by Phyllis Krasilovsky

L.C. IS THE GREATEST

By

Pub Date: April 1st, 1975
Publisher: Nelson

Louise Castle (she calls herself L.C.) is trying to put aside enough money from her macaroni jewelry business to get her adored, fun-loving mother away from Him--the withdrawn and selfishly crude Father who calls his wife a whore and a prostitute. She also chafes at being ethnically neither here nor there, a non-religious, English Jew who is superconscious and disdainful of her Brooklyn neighbors' speech habits, clothes and whitefish lunches. . . yet when Catherine Reilly's family talks about kikes and heathens she feels proud of Our People after all. Slicked over with lots of mid-30's references to Dorothy Lamour, home-fashioned falsies and Depression meals, Louise's neighborhood is cheerfully authentic right down to the tactics of groping boys and the cut of her girlfriends' underwear. The story is also up front in dealing with both the overt anti-Semitism Louise hears from others and her own covert feelings about the Jewish style. But the theme, like the conflict between the elder Castles, is not so much developed as reiterated--until Louise opts for Jewishness after realizing that the Reillys' don't read books and her father abruptly asks for a divorce and walks out. Despite an attractive surface-candor this never gets beyond the stereotype Louise turns over in her mind.