Sunday Jews

Rating:
Summary: Thank god. I thought it was just me.....
Review: (I'm tickled to see these other reviews.)

I tried. Really I did. But to no avail.

Too many characters to keep track of. No discernable connection between them...even though they're supposedly in the same family! How did the author stay interested enough to tell this story?

Knowing that this author was president of PEN and the American Congress of Letters (or whatever) makes me think that the Empress has no clothes. Or that she simply had a multi-book contract to fulfill and that because of her "fame" no one at the publisher had te balls to reject the manuscript.....

Rating:
Summary: A reader in New York, N.Y.
Review: Getting into this book, which its long sentences (no, not really like Henry James--Calisher's style is not poetic, but is deeply probing and thoughtful) and many characters, is difficult. But the story of this family is really very absorbing. Making the two principal characters an archeologist and a philospher is a foil for the writer's style of questioning, analyzing, and reflecting on all aspects of family life, religion, culture, money-making, art.... But it does work. I related to the characters and to the emotional strength of the book and the family.

Rating:
Summary: A reader in New York, N.Y.
Review: I am heartened to see so many readers willing to disclose how awful this book is. The only way I got through it is by its being the only book I had on a 12 hour flight. There is not a true or credible character to be found in nearly 700 pages. I tolerate a wide variety of writing styles, but not ones that are deliberately opaque. There are pages of utter gibberish here. And honestly, the "deep thoughts" are just silly.

Rating:
Summary: Not to be believed
Review: Jewish Zipporah Zangwill married Catholic Peter Duffy. They have five children together. However, over the years, the former philosophy professor Peter's health degenerates until he becomes mentally incompetent and physically incapacitated. Zipporah takes Peter to Italy so his fiends and peers will see how far he has deteriorated. In Italy, Zipporah receives help with her spouse from an Israeli nurse, Debra Cohen, who vanishes immediately following Peter death.

As the years go by, widow Zipporah inherits a fortune from a friend and takes a wealthy lover. She is now a senior citizen and her five children are now middle aged with adult children of their own. Finding a clue to Debra's disappearance, Zipporah's grandson Bertram searches for the missing Sabra though many years have passed since she vanished.

This is an interesting character study that looks closely at a mixed religious family with a Catholic patriarch and a Jewish matriarch guiding them over the years. The story line enables the reader to see life as Zipporah, Peter, their children and grandchildren live it. Though the action is limited, fans of a deep slice of life will relish this delightful family drama.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: How could it get good reviews?
Review: My wife read the cover reviews, full of praise, so we both checked it out of the library, and spent 15 minutes reading passages to each other, at first with dismay, and then, thankfully, with a lot of laughs. It was consistently, horribly written: flabby sentences, pretentious settings (like we should care she dines with university presidents), characters one wishes to . . .(oh, nevermind). Just awful.

Rating:
Summary: You can't tell a book by its cover
Review: Once again, a book that was overwhelmingly favorably reviewed is one that I cannot even get through. I can barely understand the writing. The book does not flow and I do not care about the characters. Now, my question is, what do reviewers see in this book that I do not?