Tension between personal development and a tight-knit community

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	• Kaaterskill Falls Allegra Goodman Delta, 1999 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 58 reviews view larger image
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My Favorite by Allegra Goodman

I first read this book a few years ago and have since re-read it, recommended it, and given it to many people. The setting, an orthodox Jewish family in the Catskills one summer in the 1970's, does not sound very promising as a popular reading book, but of course that's the joy of really great writing. And Allegra Goodman is definitely a great writer: funny, insightful, casually profound. I've enjoyed everything I've read by her, beginning with a short story I found in a collection of Great Stories by Jewish Writers. Totally unknown to me and up next to works by Singer and other icons, her story in the collection was easily the best, in my opinion. I'm not Jewish, I might add, nor particularly interested in "the varieties of religious experience," but then she doesn't write about religion per se. Her characters are just very interesting people. That said, the culture her characters inhabit is fascinating and entirely accessible. I used to teach Comparative Literature at the college level, and I would definitely recommend this book to teachers, and students, as well as anyone else who has an imagination and knows good writing when they see it.

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A story to get lost in

I picked this up at a used book store, knowing nothing about it except what the cover told me. Having grown up on the edge of the Catskills, having had some experience in my home town with "summer people from the city", and being an avid reader of Chaim Potok, Faye Kellerman and Harry Kemelman, I felt this book about a small Orthodox Jewish community that moves upstate together from NYC every summer was "chosen" for me. I loved it absolutely. Rich story, full of complicated characters, details of life in a traditional society, and insight into the human spirit. Reminds me of the best of my summer reading when I was a kid--getting utterly lost in the lives of the fictional characters, and never wanting the story to end. A reviewer from Newsday called Allegra Goodman a "young Mozart of Jewish fiction". How apt.

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Tension between personal development and a tight-knit community

This is a tight, sociological and psychological novel about a community of Orthodox Jews; although she follows many intersecting characters, this is primarily the story of a young, married woman with five children who wants to express her personality apart from being a homemaker while staying within the community. The theme is reflected in the development of some of the children. It's moving and it moves!

One of my favorite books of all time

The first time I tried to read this book, I put it down after about 70 pages. Nothing was happening! Then I picked it up again and was mesmerized. Allegra Goodman tells this story through the eyes of multiple characters -- I can't even count how many points of view she uses -- and it works, in a quiet, seamless way. She makes it look easy to keep track of that many characters and have them all work together. This is a vast novel that suggests a great depth. It is a deeply spiritual novel without being "religious."

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

In the summer of '76, the Shulmans and the Melishes migrate to Kaaterskill, the tiny town in upstate New York where Orthodox Jews and Yankee year-rounders live side by side from June through August. Elizabeth Shulman, a devout follower of Rav Elijah Kirshner and the mother of five daughters, is restless. She needs a project of her own, outside her family and her cloistered community. Across the street, Andras Melish is drawn to Kaaterskill by his adoring older sisters, bound to him by their loss and wrenching escape from the Holocaust. Both comforted and crippled by his sisters' love, Andras cannot overcome the ambivalence he feels toward his children and his own beautiful wife. At the top of the hill, Rav Kirshner is coming to the end of his life, and he struggles to decide which of his sons should succeed him: the pious but stolid Isaiah, or the brilliant but worldly Jeremy. Behind the scenes, alarmed as his beloved Kaaterskill is overdeveloped by Michael King, the local real estate broker, Judge Miles Taylor keeps an old secret in check, biding his time....

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