GROWING UP AT GROSSINGER'S

From the time she was eight until she went to Brandeis University, the author lived in the Catskills at what was in fact one of New York's earliest swinging singles clubs. Her memories are mixed: she rarely saw her mother, the social director; she had no friends in town (Tania had to ride home from school by hotel limousine and, in any case, could never invite schoolmates to the hotel); and there was an obvious social chasm between her immediate family and those closer to the tyrannical grande dame Jennie Grossinger. On the other hand, there were the conveniences of a vast and huge pleasure dome (endless food, sports, companionship, no changing of sheets), her acquaintance with celebrities like Jackie Robinson and Rocky Marciano and Eddie Fisher (who did not really want to marry Debbie), plus constant access to attractive and willing young men: life in an amusing fishbowl--fun if you like fishbowls. The author, who does not much care for the new slick, convention-oriented Grossinger's, seems to have survived her childhood quite well. For one thing, it enabled her to get a contract to write this trivial, if occasionally entertaining, memoir.