The First Desire : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I was very disappointed in this book. The subject matter had great promise but failed to live up to it. This is a family story that takes place in Buffalo,NY. There are four adult sisters and one adult brother. The head of the family is a recently widowed father. It starts with the disappearance of one sister. The story then introduces the rest of the family, and their reaction to the disappearance. I felt the characters never reached a fullness so that I could care about them. There were a lot of words to the story and sometimes they made no sense. The one character that I enjoyed and could almost root for was the father's girlfriend. She was a woman with a jaded past but she was flesh and blood and I cared how things would work out for her. Nobody else in the family liked her. Family stories are one of my favorite story lines but this one did not satisfy my appetite.

Rating:
Summary: An Engrossing and Satisfying Debut Novel
Review: It's July 1929. Sadie lounges, enjoying a serene morning in her own home --- until her brother Irving arrives with the news that their sister has disappeared. The missing sister, Goldie, was the oldest sibling who ran the household after the death of their mother and also worked at the library. She always had been so reliable.

No one can explain why or how Goldie vanished. Yet the family members living at home hesitate when Sadie questions them about her last days there. One of the sisters, Jo, doesn't tell Sadie her own viewpoint concerning Goldie's disappearance. Goldie had been wandering and dreamy. In Jo's opinion, a man was surely involved. She can't quite decide how to feel about her sister's absence: is fear the appropriate emotion? Jo longs for her mother, who would have known the proper frame of mind for the family mystery.

Their father has taken up with a woman of whom no one (except Irving) approves. The father's reaction to Goldie's absence horrifies the remaining family members. He insists on sitting shivah for her, although it is a declaration of her death, which has never been proven. According to Sadie, "You can't erase a person, though her father in his rage will try." When the time comes, the sisters excuse themselves from the ceremony. Instead of donating Goldie's clothing to charity, the women hide them in the attic.

The plot follows the family from 1929 to 1950, with flashbacks lending back-story. One by one, the family members' stories are told, back and forth, braiding them together into intricate patterns of personalities and relationships. Sadie has the affluent life she has always wanted, with two daughters and an attentive husband. Yet she wonders what she's missing. Jo falls in love with a female co-worker, and into heartbreak. Irving, the sisters' only brother, has a huge secret he guards from his sisters and father. Meanwhile, Irving continues to pilfer from his family in order to gamble until he heads off to war. The atrocities he views affect Irving strongly, yet he returns to his old ways when he comes home from the war. And sister Celia is as odd as she always has been --- following handsome strangers, making scenes in public places, and refusing to bathe. We also learn the bittersweet story of their father's lover, Lillian, who is an integral character in the story.

Debut novelist Nancy Reisman paints gorgeously haunting descriptions: a man's overcoat is "like an unbuttoned pelt"; a father has gone to work during a family tragedy "leaving a pale gray blur in his place." The characters and their stories are subtle and real. Just as in real life, there are no stereotyped personalities and no overly neat conclusions. The story draws readers in until they feel absorbed into the Cohen family. This engrossing and satisfying novel is the perfect companion for a rainy afternoon in front of the fire while sipping tea.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon

Rating:
Summary: ...reminiscent of Virginia Woolf at her best...
Review: Reviewed by Colleen Hollister for Small Spiral Notebook

First Desire has a soft and subtle lyricism of language that is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf at her best. But all of that has been said.

This is a story about five adult siblings, their father, their Buffalo neighbors, and their late mother, whose absence is so palpable that she is a character herself. This is a simple framework, and a potentially simple story, about family and relationships. From the beginning, each character commands its own individual personality but also falls into place as a member of the family. Sadie is the capable young wife; Celia the fragile and childlike sister; Jo the brusque and independent one; Irving the youngest, fond of gambling, drinking and women. Their father, Abe Cohen, owns a successful jewelry store. Each member cannot possibly escape - they are all interlinked, one member described by the next, one responsible to another. Oldest sister Goldie, however, has tried to pull herself away. This is the image that opens the novel: Sadie standing in her front window, luxuriating in the quiet morning, watching Irving stride up her lawn to tell her Goldie is missing. This event sets up a ripple effect, touching every action and thought in a family already shaken from loss.

At first glance this is a novel about women, flowers, tea. Her characters reveal their emotions through attacks on rose wallpaper and descriptions of clouds. As a novel, The First Desire is slow and unexciting. Most of the plot is laid out from the beginning, and there are few developments the reader would not have expected. But this is a writerly book, and the writing and structure serve to entrance the reader better than a dramatic plot would. Each chapter settles in the point of view of a single character and this circling from one character to another and then back creates a repetition that holds the novel together. The fact that many chapters have appeared in literary journals attests to their tight construction - they can stand on their own, and are thus complete stories in themselves.

Thus focused, the work hones in on its central problem, what Reisman calls the fight between two "desires": the first the need to be connected to loved ones, to be recognized, accepted and comforted; the second to be invisible, independent, to hide. Goldie has successfully hidden herself, but the family suffers. Such a complicated problem creates a complicated, layered novel, told in pieces of time, pieces of consciousness, all woven together like strands of fine silk thread.

The writing is so suited to the subject that Reisman's world, its problems and its emotions, stand fully upright in their vividness. The novel is infused with sadness, attuned to changes in the weather. The words are lush, paragraphs given the texture of a soft cashmere sweater. The time period, the late 1920s through the 1950s, is clearly evoked, using appropriate words like "davenport", without feeling heavy or dated. Accordingly, Buffalo is not just a setting, but a feeling, one solid piece of the novel's tone, much like the jigsaw puzzles Celia works to calm her distracted mind.

The reader is drawn in by the novel's many pieces and how intricately they fit together. At Reisman's hand, what could be a simple story turns into an exposition of the many possible layers of sadness and loneliness, an exploration of what it means to be a family.

Nancy Reisman is by no means an amateur, and The First Desire is, undoubtedly, a novel that lives up to its promise.