Customer Reviews

Roommates: My Grandfather's Story

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4 star:		(3)
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I could not put in down, it held my attention. One of the best books I have ever read! It would have wonderful to have a relationship with my Grandfather like that. The Great-Grand Children will never forget him.

I first encountered this book in shortened, abriged form, within an old Reader's Digest. I bought the book and found it a moving, touching, stirring, amusing, funny, and close-to-home tale. I used a cutting of it's story in prose interp competitions. Because of Max Appple's genius, needless to say, I won many awards.

Here's a true story that'll make you laugh, cry, and rejoice that you're alive. Today, when dysfunctional families threaten to be the norm, this family functions solidly together despite disagreements and recriminations. Love doesn't conquer all, but it's the glue that holds life together just when it's falling apart.

Herman (Rocky) Goldstein is an aged Jewish baker, a tough, scrappy, comic curmudgeon who shares a garage apartment with his grandson, Max. After the death of Max's father, Max takes the 93-year-old grandfather to graduate school with him.

When Max meets Debby, an attractive 60s radical, Rocky does everything to break up the romance. After meeting Rocky in the off-campus apartment the two men share, Debby remarks, "Even if he's paying half the rent, you're getting a bad deal."

Max and Debby do marry (a ceremony that Rocky refuses to attend). They have two children and Debby contracts a fatal disease. Just as Max begins to crumble, his grandfather, now 103 years of age, arrives to love the family and show them how to survive.

Seldom has a more touching tribute been written. "Roommates" is an absolutely splendid story.

This is a sweet memoir of a grandparent/grandchild relationship. The grandfather is a tough, feisty, old guy that will charm you. I like the cover photo too...

Reading Roommates;My Grandfather's Story & Gootie; My Grandmothers Story, took me back home to the same neighborhood and time frame. Max Apple & his sisters and I & my sisters, lived about 6 doors from each other and played toghther from time to time. I remember his sisters twin beds and wished they were mine. One of those men walking to and from American Seating was my father.I remember "two bit Sophie".What a hoot!Later my sister Betty would be Dr. Farber's office nurse for many years.As a nurse I also took care of Debby and on another occasion, her mother, at St. Mary's Hospital. American Bakery, Jack Remes, Steketee's,the grocery store around the corner etc all brought my early childhood back vividly . I also remember the faces of Gootie & Rocky. The picture of Gootie looks exactly like my "Busha".Anyone growing up in that neighborhood in Grand Rapids, MI the late 40's and 50's can go home again.

This was a nice, quiet easy read. A story with a lot of heart. I enjoyed the book. I received the book quickly and read it during my first week of retirement.

Although this is quite a thin book (a mere 211 pages), which i read over the course of a weekend, i was left with the feeling that it was much longer. It covers a lot of ground. It moves quickly through time and space, and at the end i realized i had traveled through many different landscapes:

- the relationship between Max and his grandfather, Rocky (who in fact had the unspellable name of Yerachmiel)
- the family dynamics while Max is growing up, where everybody is in everybody's business (and i thought my family was unique)
- The American life of Lithuanian-Polish Orthodox Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century
- Max in college in the 60s, with Vietnam as a backdrop
- Max and his romantic life, Debby, etc
- Joel Kerner and his terrible accident
- Marriage, and kids
- Debby's disease
- The effects of Debby's absence on the children
- Rocky's renaissance

Among others!

This is a very well written memoir, and it makes me want to find other works by Max Apple. He was able to cover so much ground with such elegant flow, and it amazes me how the narrative was never hurried or incomplete.

That picture on the cover, with Rocky mixing dough, is worth almost all of the words of the book. To say he was spunky would be a disservice to Rocky. He was above convention, stubborn as a deaf bull, but adorable.

Although there were some "made-for-TV" moments (Rocky baking cookies, the final scene during the burial), i'd rather categorize them into the "life is cornier than fiction" section. Most of the time i marveled at the closeness this family had, plus i had to laugh at some of Rocky's antics.