A Reason to See You Again

Spending 1971 - 2007 with Frieda (grandmother), Shelly, Nancy (daughters, mom), and Jess (granddaughter) is a few pleasantly aggravating decades in the life of a family that's on the surface a matriarchy, but the waters beneath are roiled by men. Frieda, whose husband, a closeted Holocaust survivor who dies early on, favors daughter Shelly, great with numbers and a whiz at a corporate startup run by a Harvey Weinstein type (whose egregious actions are ignored by Shelly). Nancy's husband Robby, a travelling salesman, fathers Jess with Nancy and four more girls besides, with other women; they all meet when he dies. Shelly's husband Asher, who wants more emotional attachment than she's willing to give, leaves her, with her closeness with show more niece Jess as her primary relationship. Nancy becomes a success in the self-help movement but cannot provide loving care for the dying Frieda. Each woman has strong connections with women friends and lovers, and all the characters encircle each other with a varying mix of appreciation and resentment. It's a short novel that packs a wallop, as each woman takes and yields the author's gaze. Memorable and real. show less

This is the story of four women from the same family. Frieda Cohen is the wife, and too soon, the widow of a Holocaust survivor, Rudy, who made his way to the US. Her daughters Nancy and Shelly are soon keen to escape to somewhere more interesting, though Nancy gets pregnant and marries young. Shelly has a successful career in the tech industry. Frieda and her daughters are sometimes estranged for years at a time, but Nancy's daughter Jess keeps connections with them all.

The story is told in short chapters, alternating between the viewpoints of the four women over 36 years between 1971 (when Nancy and Shelly are 15 and 12) and 2007, with sometimes several years between chapters, reflecting the sometimes fractured nature of the show more relationships between the women.

A short, readable, thoughtful novel, with some warmth and wit. I am not quite sure that I grasped all the nuances on first reading, and I preferred Jami Attenberg's previous book, a memoir of her life as a writer, but I liked this and look forward to reading her other work. show less

A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg is a recommended dysfunctional mother/daughter drama spanning over forty decades.

After Chicago residents Frieda Cohen and her two daughters, Nancy and Shelly, lose their husband/father Rudy, a closeted Holocaust survivor, they slowly fall apart as a family under Frieda's sharp tongue. Nancy heads to college where she soon moves in with her boyfriend and future husband, Robby, and becomes pregnant at 21. They have a daughter, Jess. Shelly graduates early and heads off to the west coast for college and stays on the coast to work in the emerging tech industry. Frieda drinks, a lot, and eventually makes her way to Miami to drink some more. What follows is a portrayal of the women in a complex, show more troubled, unhappy family.

A Reason to See You Again is a character driven novel as it follows and develops the female characters who are members of this distinctly unhappy and dysfunctional family over a span of forty years. Chapters alternate between characters as they all experience resentment, unspoken anger, change allegiances, and hold grudges against each other. The male characters are basically despicable or irrelevant. Really, none of the characters are likable.

After a very promising start the narrative decidedly coasted downhill for me. There is no real, firm plot. As the chapters randomly jump ahead in time and follow a different character, I was often left wanting more as a reader. It also felt melancholy. I wanted to love this novel but ended up just barely liking some parts of it. Thanks to Ecco for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.
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Short little slip of a novel, mixed generations of mostly ladies aging through life. Was left wanting more, which is a happy change from most novels. Liked the focus on pivots, could use one now.

As I have noticed with her other books, the author's style tells more than it shows. On the other hand, I love the realistic way she writes about sex: "The physicality of her encounters made her think something real was happening." Recommended for all libraries.

This book is a look at the Cohen family over 40 years. They are a family of 4 at the beginning of the novel - father Rudy who had been in a concentration camp and was still keeping secrets from his wife; mother Frieda who takes care of people in a nursing home during the day but can't quite take care of her family;, oldest daughter Nancy who is the pretty sister and younger daughter Shelly who is the smart sister. The family barely gets along but when the patriarch dies, they find out that he was really the glue that held the family together and they go from being an unhappy family to a major dysfunctional family. The novel covers a 40 year time span starting in 1971 and we get a look at a changing America as the backdrop to the lives show more of Frieda and her two daughters.

After Rudy dies, Frieda realizes that her daughters don't really even like her. After they leave home, she rarely hears from them. She moves from Chicago to Miami to try to start a new life but her life is unstructured and filled with booze and the wrong men. Nancy gets married at 20 - not because she really loves the guy but because she is pregnant. He is a traveling salesman with a shadowy lifestyle and their life is pretty nomadic which makes it difficult for their daughter Jess to make friends. Shelly is so smart and hates being part of her family. As soon as she graduates from high school, she goes to school on the west coast and then finds a job in the early technology field. The two sisters see each other occasionally but their time together often ends up in a disagreement of some sort. The one thing they do agree on is to stay as far away from their mother as possible.

This is a book about family and motherhood and how difficult it can be to love your child while you are chasing your own goals. It's a story about family love and forgiveness. And most importantly, it's about the changes that need to be made to find happiness in life. They learn that you have to let go of past hurts and accept your family if to find happiness. show less

What a family. A youngish widow of a holocaust survivor and her two daughters through the years and all their permutations, laughing and cringing along the way. Nothing stays the same and yet they all muddle through.