Customer Reviews

Just the Way You Want Me

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Just the Way You Want Me is a powerful novel that reaches into our political past in a most personal way. Many write about the effect of political repression on politics, but few writers show the effect on the human heart. With wit, charm, and poignancy, Nora Eisenberg traces a family through decades of trauma. The book is a mystery of sorts, but in a most original way, filled with emotion, humor, and wisdom . The main character is appealing and charming as she narrates her search for a disappeared father, reaching back into the past as she moves ahead into a new future. I highly recommend it.

With a stunning second novel following the incredible fictional memoir "The War at Home," Nora Eisenberg again shows her unique colors as a first-rate writer, both in her craft and in her adept manner of sharing a very special cultural milieu. For those who grew up in the richly diverse political communities of the mid-20th century, the main character Betsy rings loud and true as one of those gently haunting, poetic, quiet girls (then women), who can't truly come into their own without obtaining the answers to long-buried, unanswered questions. Unanswered questions that, in fact, were never fully articulated in the first place.
Betsy Vogel, about to move on to a committed relationship and marriage to David, would be the envy of thousands of single women in their forties. So the reader is quickly clued in to the reality that demons beyond anyone's control may destroy this seeming promise of life-long love and companionship, while Betsy sets about to unearth the truth about her allegedly deceased father, whom she finds shockingly missing from his gravesite.
Her inner turmoil, juxtaposed with her painful memories of growing up with a father on the run and a serious disturbed mother, make her journey toward discovery a story that leaves the reader breathless with fear, anticipation, intense curiosity, and a slow, rumbling heartache.
Eisenberg's descriptions of her main character's exploration are unusually palpable, and cause the motion forward of the story and plot to be kinisthetically experienced by the reader. And as in her previous novel, Eisenberg manages to combine a masterful plot and craft with a telescopic view of a most significant period in post-war USA, one that sadly sheds more darkness than light on fundamental issues of democracy, freedom, and revolutionary thought.

Nora Eisenberg's first book, The War at Home, exploded with humor and vivid characters and earned this wildly original author a dedicated following as well as critical acclaim. With Just the Way You Want Me, she tells the story of Betsy Ross Vogel, a 40 year old journalist who is strangely stuck at a crossroads in life. She's involved with the perfect man and about to get married, but is haunted by a tragic childhood. Betsy is the daughter of one Sam Vogel, a magnetic political leader who was persecuted by the FBI during the McCarthy era, and hounded - Betsy believes - to his death. She gives up everything to make a suspenseful and heartbreaking journey across the U.S. - a quest that takes her into the dark heart of American history and forces her to confront the unfinished mystery of her own past. Riveting and unforgettable, with many chilling insights into the current political climate.

Eisenberg has written a warm and tragic novel about a daughter who searches for her father, seemingly destroyed by the McCarthy witch hunts. The writing is vibrant, incisive, and richly larded with Eisenberg's incredible sense of humor and timing. I can't remember when I last read a book so pinned by the cataclysms of history, yet so bouyant despite the obvious pain her characters live through. Get this book!!!

Nora Eisenberg's new novel, Just the Way You Want Me, is a fascinating study of family relationships within the context of political repression in the 50s and 60s. It's a novel about memory and longing for acceptance. The main character, Betsy Vogel's quest to find her father is also a quest for belonging--to a family, a community--something which, because of her father's involvement in progressive politics, she had never experienced. I found the novel dramatically compelling, suprising, mysterious but also remarkably prescient, considering our country today, with the Patriot Act and other attempts to curtail our civil liberties. In that way, the novel is a history lesson, one we all need to learn from.