THE SINGER SISTERS

A sprawling family drama about two generations of folk rock musicians.

Judie Zingerman and Dave Cantor were baby boomer musical royalty, renowned for writing and performing their own songs in the 1960s and ’70s. But when we first meet them in 1995, in their Greenwich Village apartment, they’re announcing their divorce to their young adult children, Emma and Leon. Both siblings are already involved in the music business, but Emma, a vocalist, has an antagonistic relationship with her mother, and soon the two are sparring about Emma’s decision to forgo college in order to tour with a ska band—Judie had skipped college herself, which she now regrets. Later, when they’re alone, Emma and Leon allude to Judie’s “tragedy”—years earlier, she’d quit the music business, for reasons that include child rearing but are never completely clear. Seltzer’s debut novel is big: lots of characters, lots of plot, lots of emoting, with a timeline that skitters back and forth and chapters told from multiple points of view. At times, it can be hard to keep track, and the writing can be overripe. Other key figures include Judie’s older sister, Sylvia, with whom she first performs, and Rose, the family’s former nanny, who has a deeper relationship to them. The author writes confidently about the music business in the different eras in which the action unfolds. And the folk rock milieu, on- and offstage, is vividly drawn, with real musicians—from Joan Baez to Patti Smith—co-existing with fictional ones.

An original, sometimes stirring story that would probably make an even better movie.