A dating adventure that packs plenty of humor but not enough focus.
A first novel details a string of unfortunate dates and a vibrant attempt at romance.
Robyn Engel wishes she had a love life. She comes from a lively Jewish family, including her sister, her loving mother, and her gruff father. But ever since childhood, she’s had bad luck with dating. She takes readers through her first several crushes, from misinterpreted flirtations to prom rejections (an Author’s Note calls this “memoir-ish” novel “creative non-fiction”). College brings a whole new dating landscape, but the sudden loss of her mother to cancer clouds her freedom. Ever persistent, Robyn graduates with honors and escapes to graduate school, where she continues to date to no avail. There are men who talk too much about themselves, men who won’t take no for an answer, men who loudly suffer indigestion. Eventually she meets Justin Case, a nice Jewish guy whom her friends bring along on a camping trip. Their dates quickly become the relationship she’s always wanted, followed by cohabitation (even as she’s keenly aware that she’s paying most of their bills) and marriage. But even this relationship deteriorates, and Robyn finds herself taking a risk: she moves to a new town, following the promise of a writing job. It’s this final journey that shows her triumph, whether or not she meets the man of her dreams. The author (Just the Right Time, 2012) weaves diary entries as well as clips from her popular blog into the narrative, which gives it authenticity. Humor and sarcasm buoy the conversational tone. The bulk of this novel is presented as a list of her many suitors, which creates a lot of different names and characters to follow. There are some choppy transitions, jumping from high school to a high school reunion, or from Jamaica to her local gym. The volume’s best parts—her family, faith, and marriage—would have made a compelling story, without the many depressing dating case studies. Engel finds her groove when she sticks with just one tale, creating appealing dialogue and building tension. While she aims for a conclusion of contentment, a final litany of dating stories nearly eclipses the positive message.
A dating adventure that packs plenty of humor but not enough focus.Pub Date: June 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5143-4540-5
Page Count: 334
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.
Fremont (After Long Silence, 1999) continues—and alters—her story of how memories of the Holocaust affected her family.
At the age of 44, the author learned that her father had disowned her, declaring her “predeceased”—or dead in his eyes—in his will. It was his final insult: Her parents had stopped speaking to her after she’d published After Long Silence, which exposed them as Jewish Holocaust survivors who had posed as Catholics in Europe and America in order to hide multilayered secrets. Here, Fremont delves further into her tortured family dynamics and shows how the rift developed. One thread centers on her life after her harrowing childhood: her education at Wellesley and Boston University, the loss of her virginity to a college boyfriend before accepting her lesbianism, her stint with the Peace Corps in Lesotho, and her decades of work as a lawyer in Boston. Another strand involves her fraught relationship with her sister, Lara, and how their difficulties relate to their father, a doctor embittered after years in the Siberian gulag; and their mother, deeply enmeshed with her own sister, Zosia, who had married an Italian count and stayed in Rome to raise a child. Fremont tells these stories with novelistic flair, ending with a surprising theory about why her parents hid their Judaism. Yet she often appears insensitive to the serious problems she says Lara once faced, including suicidal depression. “The whole point of suicide, I thought, was to succeed at it,” she writes. “My sister’s completion rate was pathetic.” Key facts also differ from those in her earlier work. After Long Silence says, for example, that the author grew up “in a small city in the Midwest” while she writes here that she grew up in “upstate New York,” changes Fremont says she made for “consistency” in the new book but that muddy its narrative waters. The discrepancies may not bother readers seeking psychological insights rather than factual accuracy, but others will wonder if this book should have been labeled a fictionalized autobiography rather than a memoir.
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982113-60-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A straightforward tale of kindness and paying it forward in 1980s New York.
When advertising executive Schroff answered a child’s request for spare change by inviting him for lunch, she did not expect the encounter to grow into a friendship that would endure into his adulthood. The author recounts how she and Maurice, a promising boy from a drug-addicted family, learned to trust each other. Schroff acknowledges risks—including the possibility of her actions being misconstrued and the tension of crossing socio-economic divides—but does not dwell on the complexities of homelessness or the philosophical problems of altruism. She does not question whether public recognition is beneficial, or whether it is sufficient for the recipient to realize the extent of what has been done. With the assistance of People human-interest writer Tresniowski (Tiger Virtues, 2005, etc.), Schroff adheres to a personal narrative that traces her troubled relationship with her father, her meetings with Maurice and his background, all while avoiding direct parallels, noting that their childhoods differed in severity even if they shared similar emotional voids. With feel-good dramatizations, the story seldom transcends the message that reaching out makes a difference. It is framed in simple terms, from attributing the first meeting to “two people with complicated pasts and fragile dreams” that were “somehow meant to be friends” to the conclusion that love is a driving force. Admirably, Schroff notes that she did not seek a role as a “substitute parent,” and she does not judge Maurice’s mother for her lifestyle. That both main figures experience a few setbacks yet eventually survive is never in question; the story fittingly concludes with an epilogue by Maurice. For readers seeking an uplifting reminder that small gestures matter.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4251-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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