The First Desire [Paperback]

Nancy Reisman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 30, 2005

When Sadie looks out her window and sees her bother standing on the front lawn she knows he can't bring good news. Fidgeting over coffee with sugar and cream he explains: Their sister is gone. Three days earlier Goldie left to go shopping and she has not returned. With Goldie's disappearance as the catalyst, The First Desire takes us deep into the life of the Cohen family and Buffalo, New York, from the Great Depression to the years immediately following World War II. Shifting perspectives from siblings Sadie, Jo, Goldie, and Irving we learn of the secrets they have managed to keep hidden--and of Lillian, the beautiful woman their father took as a lover while his wife was dying. In this astonishing novel Reisman brings to life the love, grief, and desires that ultimately bind one family together.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Told both in real-time and through flashbacks, The First Desire follows the Cohen family through several life changes, including the death of their mother, the birth of a child, financial hardships, and eventually World War II. While much of the novel is seen through the eyes of Sadie Cohen Feldstein, the second eldest and seemingly most responsible of the five Cohen siblings, debut novelist Nancy Reisman does an excellent job of getting into the heads and hearts of the remaining characters. For example, when Jo Cohen, the moody, withdrawn, almost masculine sister falls in love with a coworker, her desire is so vivid it seems almost tangible. Celia, the youngest sister who floats in and out of reality, is prone to moments of clarity that completely negate her role as the neediest, most vulnerable sibling. Finally, through Irving, the lone male in the group, Reisman shows the powerful effect that loneliness can have on the relationships that seem to matter most. Yet while each of these characters is revealed to be a juxtaposition of extremes, it is always family that draws them back in eventually. As Goldie says, "he is crossing the snow of the lawn, he is holding out his arms. Her life astonishes her: he is calling her name." --Gisele Toueg --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Reisman's first novel (after the prize-winning collection, House Fires) is mesmerizing, not because of the action of the plot, which is minimal, but because Reisman demonstrates a rare, poetic understanding of family dynamics. The catalyst for this narrative about the hidden dramas of a Jewish family living in Buffalo from the late 1920s to 1950 occurs offstage. Rebecca Cohen, wife of jewelry store owner Abe, has died, leaving five adult children. Goldie, the eldest, on whom the responsibility for caring for her siblings has fallen, suddenly disappears without a word. Her departure leaves Sadie Cohen Feldstein, the only married sister, to cope with her tyrannical father and difficult siblings, who live together in the family home. Celia is mentally unstable, prone to misbehavior in public. Jo is rude, moody and fiercely resentful of having to protect Celia. Handsome, spoiled Irving is a wastrel and compulsive gambler, too fond of cards, whiskey and women. Abe, the paterfamilias, escapes his family into the arms of Lillian Schumacher, a fallen woman. Goldie's disappearance is also an escape, though the family fears she is dead. Irving escapes his gambling debts by joining the army in 1940. The others yearn to flee their responsibilities, but the years roll by until another family crisis brings Goldie home. The echoing word in the narrative is loneliness, used to signify each character's inchoate longings for connection, understanding, "touching" (another signal word) and love. Reisman writes with beauty and precise imagery; she describes one character's personality as "carp under ice, nibbling ancient disappointments." This realism, subtly laced with tenderness and compassion, distinguishes a novel whose addictive embrace continues after the last page has been turned.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (August 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400077990
• ISBN-13: 978-1400077991
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,412,412 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read!, May 19, 2005

By 

Katrina Denza "KatDenza" (NC, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The First Desire: A Novel (Hardcover)

"The First Desire" is an amazing well-written, controlled book, with rich layers of characterization.

What does it mean to remain loyal to your family? What part of you would you have to hide in order to remain so? Or would you be more inclined to disappear all together? This book takes a look at each member of the Cohen family and how they deal with their own familial ties. After the death of her mother, eldest daughter Goldie Cohen disappears. Her father believes she is dead, and if she isn't in reality, she is to him, so he holds shiva; Jo lives her entire life afraid to claim her sexuality; Sadie who lives her life in the ways she'd expected wonders at the end if she's chosen wisely; and Irving, a gambling man who can't settle down with one woman lives a double life: one his family can approve and one that feels closer to who he is. Finally, there's Celia, the slightly unstable, fragile member of the family whom everyone works hard to protect.

31 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ...reminiscent of Virginia Woolf at her best..., October 20, 2004

By 

Felicia Sullivan (New York, ny United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The First Desire: A Novel (Hardcover)

Reviewed by Colleen Hollister for Small Spiral Notebook

First Desire has a soft and subtle lyricism of language that is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf at her best. But all of that has been said.

This is a story about five adult siblings, their father, their Buffalo neighbors, and their late mother, whose absence is so palpable that she is a character herself. This is a simple framework, and a potentially simple story, about family and relationships. From the beginning, each character commands its own individual personality but also falls into place as a member of the family. Sadie is the capable young wife; Celia the fragile and childlike sister; Jo the brusque and independent one; Irving the youngest, fond of gambling, drinking and women. Their father, Abe Cohen, owns a successful jewelry store. Each member cannot possibly escape - they are all interlinked, one member described by the next, one responsible to another. Oldest sister Goldie, however, has tried to pull herself away. This is the image that opens the novel: Sadie standing in her front window, luxuriating in the quiet morning, watching Irving stride up her lawn to tell her Goldie is missing. This event sets up a ripple effect, touching every action and thought in a family already shaken from loss.

At first glance this is a novel about women, flowers, tea. Her characters reveal their emotions through attacks on rose wallpaper and descriptions of clouds. As a novel, The First Desire is slow and unexciting. Most of the plot is laid out from the beginning, and there are few developments the reader would not have expected. But this is a writerly book, and the writing and structure serve to entrance the reader better than a dramatic plot would. Each chapter settles in the point of view of a single character and this circling from one character to another and then back creates a repetition that holds the novel together. The fact that many chapters have appeared in literary journals attests to their tight construction - they can stand on their own, and are thus complete stories in themselves.

Thus focused, the work hones in on its central problem, what Reisman calls the fight between two "desires": the first the need to be connected to loved ones, to be recognized, accepted and comforted; the second to be invisible, independent, to hide. Goldie has successfully hidden herself, but the family suffers. Such a complicated problem creates a complicated, layered novel, told in pieces of time, pieces of consciousness, all woven together like strands of fine silk thread.

The writing is so suited to the subject that Reisman's world, its problems and its emotions, stand fully upright in their vividness. The novel is infused with sadness, attuned to changes in the weather. The words are lush, paragraphs given the texture of a soft cashmere sweater. The time period, the late 1920s through the 1950s, is clearly evoked, using appropriate words like "davenport", without feeling heavy or dated. Accordingly, Buffalo is not just a setting, but a feeling, one solid piece of the novel's tone, much like the jigsaw puzzles Celia works to calm her distracted mind.

The reader is drawn in by the novel's many pieces and how intricately they fit together. At Reisman's hand, what could be a simple story turns into an exposition of the many possible layers of sadness and loneliness, an exploration of what it means to be a family.

Nancy Reisman is by no means an amateur, and The First Desire is, undoubtedly, a novel that lives up to its promise.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing Happens...Yet Everything Happens, September 19, 2005

By 

Jill I. Shtulman (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The First Desire: A Novel (Hardcover)

For those readers who are only content with action novels, this is not a novel that will satisfy. But for those who enjoy characters who unfold and come to life and haunt you for days -- weeks! -- to come, The First Desire is a novel to be read and savored.

In essence, the First Desire is about how a family can sustain and at the same time, destroy us..how our internal vistas end up exploding into the harsh glare of reality. While reading this novel, I kept wondering: "How can someone as young as Nancy Reisman "get" what life was like in the 1920s and 1930s and recreate it so convincingly? How can she breathe life into these characters so beautifully?" It's the novelist's skill, and she does it to near perfection.

These are not one dimensional characters and there's not a false move here. Anyone who has ever explored the minefields of family life (and that's about 99% of us), will find something to relate to. I felt as if I knew these characters, their confusions and frustrations, as they muddled through. With the wealth of intimate details, these characters are very, very real.