Hide this

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman
Loading...

Kaaterskill Falls

by Allegra Goodman

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations
362414,003 (3.48)12
Loading...
won't like will probably not like will probably like will like will love

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

Showing 4 of 4
Offers very interesting insights to Jewish values and traditions, but the story is very slow in the telling. ( )
  vhoeschler | Jul 31, 2008 |
I really did not enjoy this book at all. It was boring and had no substance.
  ebot319 | Jun 19, 2008 |
I really enjoy Goodman's stories about religious Jews, and this one was esp interesting since the community was different from the ones I've been exposed to. However, there were too many storylines going on at once. ( )
  claudiabowman | Aug 7, 2006 |
Showing 4 of 4
no reviews | add a review
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Series (with order)
Canonical Title
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Awards and honors
Epigraph
Dedication
First words
Friday afternoon, Edelman's Bakery in Washington Heights is like the stock exchange--paper numbers strewn across the floor, everybody shouting orders: "Give me two! Seedless! No, make that four."
Quotations
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original publication date1998
Awards and honorsNational Book Award finalist (1998), New York Times Notable Book (1998), National Book Award finalist (Fiction, 1998), Edward Lewis Wallant Award (1999)
First wordsFriday afternoon, Edelman's Bakery in Washington Heights is like the stock exchange--paper numbers strewn across the floor, everybody shouting orders: "Give me two! Seedless! No, make that four."
Last words(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Book description

Amazon.com (ISBN 0385323891, Hardcover)

Allegra Goodman's remarkable first novel intertwines the stories of three Orthodox Jewish families, each of whom is tugged between religious tradition and the secular world. The story takes place in the upstate New York town of Kaaterskill, summer Mecca for the tightly knit Kirshner sect. Model wife and mother Elizabeth Shulman pictures her community as a sort of Mont-Saint-Michel, an island both joined and separated from the outside world as if by rising and falling tides. Fascinated with what lies on the spiritual mainland, she hides behind the reassuring rhythms of religious observance, though she's inspired with a "desire, as intense as prayer," to create something all her own.

Despite her pious husband's doubts, she does, in the form of a store catering to Kaaterskill's "summer people"--a community Goodman brings memorably to life. The Shulmans' neighbor Andras Melish, a Hungarian who fled World War II and a vanished world of assimilated European Jewry, struggles to understand his young Argentinian wife Nina, whose need for tradition grows with each passing year. The ailing Rav Kirshner must decide which son will carry on in his shoes: dutiful but plodding Isaiah or his brilliant but secular brother Jeremy. Andras and Nina's daughter befriends an Arab girl, while Elizabeth and Isaac's daughter dreams in secret of Israel. Meanwhile, the town's year-round residents observe the Orthodox newcomers with bewilderment and occasional dismay.

As she proved in a warm and funny 1996 collection of stories, The Family Markowitz, Goodman is an unparalleled observer of human nature. Here, she charts with quiet assurance the daily rhythms of Kaaterskill: the meals prepared and eaten, the Holy Days observed, the ebb and flow of married life. Goodman gets all the important details right; her children's dialogue, for instance, is unerring. Above all, however, she brings to the subject of religious life a seriousness and subtlety rarely found in recent fiction. Wise was the word used again and again to describe The Family Markowitz. Applied to Kaaterskill Falls, it is no less apt.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:19 -0400)

The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details.

Popular covers

 

Help/FAQs | About | Privacy/Terms | Blog | Contact | LibraryThing.com | APIs | WikiThing | Common Knowledge | 45,449,355 books!