Customer Reviews

Sunday Jews

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The book was well-reviewed, but I found it terribly disappointing. The characters are both unrealistic and unsympathetic, the book is stuffed with solecisms, particularly regarding Judaism, and the writing style is at best precious and at worst impenetrable.

My wife read the cover reviews, full of praise, so we both checked it out of the library, and spent 15 minutes reading passages to each other, at first with dismay, and then, thankfully, with a lot of laughs. It was consistently, horribly written: flabby sentences, pretentious settings (like we should care she dines with university presidents), characters one wishes to . . .(oh, nevermind). Just awful.

A life revealed, this book examines one family's experience over three generations, as viewed from the matriarch's retrospective position. It conveys the acquired wisdom and philosophical insight of the family elder, which frequently seems quite profound. This perspective conveyed is rarely accomplished in fiction and seems a rare gem acquired over a lifetime. Sometimes the thought process is difficult to follow however and completing this work can seem somewhat of a labor. The reader who completes this task will likely feel well rewarded and possess a greater apreciation of the threads that tie generation to generation.

Getting into this book, which its long sentences (no, not really like Henry James--Calisher's style is not poetic, but is deeply probing and thoughtful) and many characters, is difficult. But the story of this family is really very absorbing. Making the two principal characters an archeologist and a philospher is a foil for the writer's style of questioning, analyzing, and reflecting on all aspects of family life, religion, culture, money-making, art.... But it does work. I related to the characters and to the emotional strength of the book and the family.

(I'm tickled to see these other reviews.)

I tried. Really I did. But to no avail.

Too many characters to keep track of. No discernable connection between them...even though they're supposedly in the same family! How did the author stay interested enough to tell this story?

Knowing that this author was president of PEN and the American Congress of Letters (or whatever) makes me think that the Empress has no clothes. Or that she simply had a multi-book contract to fulfill and that because of her "fame" no one at the publisher had te balls to reject the manuscript.....

The only reason I finished this book is because once I start a book, I finish no matter how bad. The writing style of this book is odd and hard to pay attention to. I can't tell you how many times my mind wondered and I didn't pay attention to what i had just read. Too many implications with no answers. Do I come to my own conclusion? I just didn't get it.

This book is deep and heavy. The sentences are complex there is a large cast of fully developed characters and it focuses in on a kind of cosmopolitan upper middle classed Jewish existence that will be alien to some people. This is a book intended for the highly literate. It is comparable to Edith Wharton or other chroniclers of a particular "set." I do not find the negative reviews of this book surprising in the world we currently inhabit--but I assure you the failing is not with this text, it's with the sloppy and undisciplined habits of mind many have. That is all--hope you read it and LOVE it.

This is the worst writing I have seen in years. It is not just bad, it is gob-smackingly appalling. It beggars belief that people have not only succeeded in tolerating it, but that they actually like it. I didn't think writing like this ever saw the light of day after the 6th grade. Not even funny-bad - just dreadful.

I am heartened to see so many readers willing to disclose how awful this book is. The only way I got through it is by its being the only book I had on a 12 hour flight. There is not a true or credible character to be found in nearly 700 pages. I tolerate a wide variety of writing styles, but not ones that are deliberately opaque. There are pages of utter gibberish here. And honestly, the "deep thoughts" are just silly.

The most pretentious book I have ever read. Who in the world talks like these people or this author?