ZWILLING'S DREAM

by Ross Feld ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1999

Feld (Shapes Mistaken, 1989, etc.) returns with an elegant novel built from the bricks of plain life--as people climb up out of the ashes of guilt and despair. Joel Zwilling was a success at 19 with an autobiographical novel about growing up in Brooklyn as the only child of Holocaust survivors. His next two books didn't do as well, but that paled to insignificance in light of the awful thing that did happen. In his 30s, Zwilling wrote a story about a man whose wife had died, and, a week before it was to run in Harper's, his own real wife, along with one of their two children, was killed. In despair and horror, he quit writing entirely, as if blaming himself for ""his own miniature Holocaust."" As the story is picked up now, it's 20 years later and Zwilling, obscure, remarried, essentially unemployed, is living in Cincinnati with his lawyer wife. And just how could his stalled, impacted life possibly change? Well, try the news of sudden interest in a movie about Zwilling, script to be written by his own son Nate, who's neither the picture of emotional balance nor free of rampant Zwillingian guilts, doubts, and remorses. Father and son are jetted to the West Coast to he wined and dined by director Brian Harkow--except that Harkow rashes off mid-wine to his 11-year-old daughter (she's got cystic fibrosis), leaving the Zwillings in the care of Harkow's handsome and intelligent assistant, Selva Tashjian (who's dreading a hysterectomy). There's fear and sorrow hidden everywhere--from Down's syndrome to plain obesity--as the reader happily meets character after character and as Harkow (who doesn't take his meds for bipolar disorder) and Selva descend on sleepy summertime Cincinnati for preproduction work. Feld is a three-star escort through the many and varied rooms of private--and thinking--lives before guarded affirmations end this gently moving comedy. Graceful, authentic, knowledgeable fiction, abundant with intelligent pleasures.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999

ISBN: 1582431396

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Counterpoint

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1999

Categories: FICTION