Customer Reviews

Salome of the Tenements

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Salome is a very uplifting novel. The characters are well developed and the plot is interesting, however, Yezierska relies on a far-fetched outcome. While this is an enjoyable read, I wasn't as touched as I was with Bread Givers and Yezierska's other works. The love story relies on overdone and sometimes cheesy themes that are predictable, although interesting.

For those who love Yezierska, this is something you should definitely read. For newcomers, I feel that BreadGivers would be more gripping.

I had never heard of the novel Salome of the Tenements, or even the author Anzia Yezieraska, when I was assigned the novel in a graduate class last semester. The rest of the students in the class hadn't either. Upon reading the book, however, I discovered that such ignorance is tragic. Salome of the Tenements is a fascinating work that should certainly be more widely known.

The novel is the sometimes-melodramatic story of Sonya, a Russian Jewish immigrant. She falls in love with John Manning, a philanthropic American millionaire. The chronicle of the rise and fall of this relationship reveals much about the poor immigrant experience in America. Additionally, the novel comments philosophically on the failure of love, the difficulty of obtaining spiritual fulfillment, and the difficulties of attaining identity in Modernist America.

There is so much that is interesting about the novel. It's wonderful to see it in print. Hopefully, it will begin to reach a much wider audience.

I was recently assigned to read this book for an upper level english literature course at my university. This was a poor choice on the professor's part. Apparently it received all kinds of praise, as can be seen on the back cover, but I don't really understand why. I tossed this on the floor after reading the first five pages, and was unable to pick it up again until the day before we were to have the reading finished. It's like reading something that some high school girl wrote one day out of boredom. The characters are unbelievable, the main character in particular seeming to be a form of self-indulgence on the author's part. It is overly-idealistic and romantic, even for the period in which it was written. I certainly would not recommend this novel to anyone, young or old. It is pure rubbish.