Through her sharp eyed observations of weddings, hospital vigils, holiday dinners, and other rituals of family life, Goodman writes about the Markowitzes from the inside, bringing each character to life.
Also in the family circle are Sarah, Ed’s wife, who teaches creative writing and longs for a more literary life, and Sarah and Ed’s daughter Miriam, a medical student who causes great alarm in her largely assimilated family by rediscovering Judaism. At the center is Rose, the cantankerous matriarch, who longs for her earlier life in London and Vienna but is now forced into dependency on her sons Ed, an academic expert on terrorism ahead of his time!, and Henry, an artistic expatriate with a taste for antiques and postmodern poetry.
In The Family Markowitz, Allegra Goodman writes with wit and compassion of three generations of Markowitzes making their way in America. ‘ The Family Markowitzis one of the most astute and engaging books about American family life to have come our way in quite a while.’ Linda Matchan, Boston Globe Especially when she meets Mikhail, falls truly in love at last, and discovers what even she could not imagine her destiny. Still, even as she embraces her tradition, Sharon’s irrepressible self tugs at her sleeve. Then, in a karmic convergence of events, Sharon starts on the path home to Judaism. Ever the optimist, Sharon is sure each time that she has struck it rich ‘spiritually speaking’ until she comes up empty. The voice that asks: ‘How come Gary got to pursue his causes, while all I got to pursue was him?’ Thus, with an open heart, a soul on fire, and her meager possessions a guitar, two Indian gauze skirts, a macram bikini, and her grandfather’s silver watch Sharon begins her own spiritual quest: living with the red footed boobies, embracing the Edenic rain forests of Molokai, seeking enlightenment with and without men at the Greater Love Salvation Church, the Consciousness Meditation Center, a couples workshop in Waikiki, the Torah Or Institute in Jerusalem, and in Professor Friedell’s University of Hawaii course on world religions. Abandoned by her folk dancing partner, Gary, in a Honolulu hotel room, Sharon realizes she could return to Boston and her estranged family or listen to that little voice inside herself. The novel, wrote Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times, ‘ratifies the achievement of the author’s short stories, even as it announces the debut of a gifted novelist.’ Now, in Paradise Park, Goodman introduces one of the most endearing, exasperating, and indomitable hero*ines in modern literature: Sharon Spiegelman. Her celebrated first novel, Kaaterskill Falls, was a national bestseller and a National Book Award finalist. Brilliant, fresh, funny, and wise, Allegra Goodman has delighted readers with her short stories in The New Yorker and her critically acclaimed collections Total Immersion and The Family Markowitz.
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