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archytas's review
2.0
This wasn't a good book. The characters are either villains or victims, and the reason the victims choose to behave as such is left totally unclear. Why the family whose viewpoint the story is told from didn't just leave town, refuse to take money, and cut the toxic people out of their lives is never fully explained. The villain's motivation is never explained either - these people are simply irredeemably awful to everyone around them. The book had a petulant and yet deeply sad tone to me, as if written by someone struggling to create a narrative to explain the inexplicable, and the swathe of trauma the holocaust left in its wake. Unfortunately, by creating a couple of snobbish new orleans reform Jews as cartoon villains, it fails miserably to explore the complexity of human survival and emotional life. I had hoped the book would explore the religious tensions between new immigrants and older settled Jewish communities, but there was almost no discussion of this in the book at all.
butyougotmysoul's review
2.0
There wasn't a whole hell of a lot of a point to this book. The main character is arrogant, childish and very naive. Not my kind of person.
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