Pomerantz’s tale could use a car chase or an explosion, something to relieve its earnestness. The proceedings lack the...
A pleasant if insubstantial rags-to-yuppiedom saga.
Robert Vishniak isn’t quite the dictionary-definition aspirational young lad of many a Great Jewish Novel, but neither is he a shlimazel Alvy Singer type. In the opening pages of Pomerantz’s debut, we find him in the fraught milieu of Northeast Philadelphia, with “miles and miles of Jews, families of four, five, and more packed into long, solid brick rows,” an Italian or two thrown in for variety. Having moved in after years with the in-laws, Stacia Vishniak is keenly aware of expenses social as well as fiscal, and she “believed that hearing what things cost was good for children, like castor oil.” She’s right, though not without qualification. The years roll by, years of dogged competition with richer cousins, surviving first crushes and engineering furtive grasps and glimpses, and Robert finds himself paying attention to numbers, particularly the lottery number that will send him either to Vietnam or to Greenwich Village. The ’70s turn into the ’80s, hippies devolve into yuppies, and Robert suddenly has everything he ever wanted and more, which is never enough. Greed may have clarified things for Gordon Gekko, but it just makes Robert pensive, Patek Philippe watch and all (“waterproof, and platinum, with a large blue face”). What goes up must come down, of course, as Robert and his more ambitious brother Barry discover come that bad stock-market day of 1987—upon which, bless her heart, the much-put-upon Stacia, always an anchor and moral center, has the last laugh, for while all around her have been flying high, she’s been doing the sensible, boring things that keep civilization chugging along.
Pomerantz’s tale could use a car chase or an explosion, something to relieve its earnestness. The proceedings lack the pointed humor of a Joshua Then and Now or the pointed ironies of a Gatsby, but the tale is competent and readable all the same.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56318-5
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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