A lyrical novel about family, love, loss, renewal, and changing generations follows a young woman's first encounter with her prospective mother-in-law, Mrs. Hornstien, and her realization, years later, as she meets her son's fiance+a7e, that she has become that same woman. 75,000 first printing.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Marty Fish is 17 years old when she meets her future mother-in-law, the awe-inspiring Mrs. Hornstien. Mrs. Hornstien lives in an enormous apartment in Ritterhouse Square, Philadelphia, complete with marble stairs and mahogany walls and a zodiac painted on the library ceiling. Heady stuff indeed for a young girl of Marty's humble background. In Mrs. Hornstien, Fredrica Wagman chronicles the relationships between Marty and her mother-in-law and Marty and her husband, Albert, from that first meeting in the Ritterhouse Square apartment to the engagement of Marty's own son 35 years later. It sounds like a pretty massive undertaking, but Wagman accomplishes it in under 120 pages.
The book might be slim, but it's certainly vocal. Everyone in Mrs. Hornstien seems to be shouting; scarcely a page passes without someone speaking in capital letters. This is especially true of Mrs. Hornstien, who seems to value DRIVE and AMBITION above all. One wishes she'd switch to emphatic italics from time to time. This is not a subtle book, but it is a heartfelt one. The message contained within it is obvious: trust love; let troubles strengthen, not break you. Mrs. Hornstien will fit nicely on the shelf next to anything by Robert Fulghum.
From Library Journal
Marty Fish is just 17 and deeply in love with the much older Albert when they appear before his mother, the imperious Ms. Hornstien, ruler of her family and of upper-crust Philadelphia society. Marty, whose own mother tears at her daughter with a harsh love that is shrouded in greed and self-absorption, is loudly reviled by Mrs. H. as soon as the couple announce their engagement. Speaking from a distance of 35 years, Marty looks back on the decades of balance and truce that bring her beyond the deathbed of Albert's mother and to her own front door as she becomes the next Mrs. Hornstien to her son's fiancee. Wagman's delicately etched scenes of emotional combat and redemption draw a picture of love and forgiveness and tragedy that bind, bless, and transform the narrator into a woman of great strength and depth.
-?Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib. Mich.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
-?Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib. Mich.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
My name is Fredrica Wagman, but it wasn't always. I started out as Riki Barris, "Riki" being short for Rita Fredrica, born in Philadelphia where I spent the first four years of my life in my grandparents home with my mother and father and my older brother. It was a great sprawling place where there were maids and my baby-nurse, big cars, a devoted chauffer by the name of I.J. Duckett, and the warmth of aunts and uncles and my grandparents all around us all the time whom I adored.
When I was four we moved into our own small house which was very hard on my mother who was used to all the space and all the help that everyone there could provide. My mother became quite depressed when we moved away from my grandparents and a hard time ensued after that for my brother and me. My father was a dentist, an oral surgeon who specialized in extracting teeth which was a kind of speciality in those days, although barbers were proported to have been doing it for years without all the training and all the honors my father collected at the University of Pennsylvania's dental school.
I attended schools first in the suburbs of Philadelphia and then in the city which was where we moved when I was eleven years old. I was married at a very early age, shamefully early, to Howard Wagman. Had five children, lost one, attended the University of Pennsylvania and Bryn Mawr College after the children were born, and was writing fiction and poetry for as long as I can remember.
Fredrica Wagman is the author of six novels -- Playing House, His Secret Little Wife, Mrs. Hornstien, Peachy, and Magic Man, Magic Man --and The Lie, just released in April 2009
When I was four we moved into our own small house which was very hard on my mother who was used to all the space and all the help that everyone there could provide. My mother became quite depressed when we moved away from my grandparents and a hard time ensued after that for my brother and me. My father was a dentist, an oral surgeon who specialized in extracting teeth which was a kind of speciality in those days, although barbers were proported to have been doing it for years without all the training and all the honors my father collected at the University of Pennsylvania's dental school.
I attended schools first in the suburbs of Philadelphia and then in the city which was where we moved when I was eleven years old. I was married at a very early age, shamefully early, to Howard Wagman. Had five children, lost one, attended the University of Pennsylvania and Bryn Mawr College after the children were born, and was writing fiction and poetry for as long as I can remember.
Fredrica Wagman is the author of six novels -- Playing House, His Secret Little Wife, Mrs. Hornstien, Peachy, and Magic Man, Magic Man --and The Lie, just released in April 2009
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best books i've ever read,
By Manola Sommerfeld (California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mrs. Hornstien (Hardcover)
This should be mandatory reading material for young women! A very short book packed with precious insight. The advice contained in this book is millions of times worth its price. Absolutely wonderful. I rushed to the store and bought an extra copy for my sister. I could write 50 more sentences and still not be able to convey the tremendous impression this book has made on me. Enjoyable from page one, funny and touching and dynamic (i love the way some of the characters speak, all in CAPS). Buy it and keep it on your nightstand forever!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A modern fable of women's lives,
By A Customer
This review is from: Mrs. Hornstien (Hardcover)
A deeply gratifying contemporary fable about family and the passing of the torch from one generation to the next. The eponymous Mrs. Hornstien is an unforgetable "everywoman" whose roughhewn nobility shines through on every page. Wagman writes in spare but intense and achingly beautiful prose that conveys more truths about the human heart and human longing and stubbornness in the face of adversity than any book in recent memory. Mrs. Hornstien is an uncommon, genuine work of literature that also speaks in an insistent and always compelling voice about our common humanity. A small gem, and a perfect Mother's Day gift as well
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Transformation and renewal in this powerful, terse novella.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Mrs. Hornstien (Hardcover)
A satisfying, circular tale of a woman's journey from naive seventeen-year-old fiancee into a family matriarch. The tale opens with Marty, a Russian Jew who lives in Philadelphia in the not-so-distant past, being introduced to her future mother-in-law. Marty is overwhelmed and intimidated by the grandeur surrounding Mrs. Hornstien and the Hornstien lifestyle. Mrs. Hornstien, called the "Boss Lady" (who is always right), by her son, comes to have a close relationship with Marty, who plays the dutiful daughter-in-law. It is only years after Mrs. Hornstien's death, when Marty's son brings his fiancee to meet her, that Marty realizes that life has come full circle. In this realization is the poignant lesson that Mrs. Hornstien for all her melodramatics and bluster had much to teach, and that life is all too fleeting. A satisfying novella that explores the transition of one woman from Marty Fish to Mrs. Hornstien
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Listmania!
So You'd Like to...
|
|
