Swimming Toward the Ocean [Hardcover]

Carole L. Glickfeld (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 13, 2001

Nineteen fifty-three, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Chenia Arnow is a petite, sensuous Betty Grable look-alike, a Russian emigre whose Old World fear of the Evil Eye and heavily accented English cannot mask her fierce intelligence and wit. Her husband, Ruben, is both a charmer and miserly, often absent, with a penchant for trumped-up lawsuits. He has a mistress. Chenia is pregnant.

It is this child, Chenia's daughter Devorah, who tells the story of her parents' marriage: of how Chenia embarks on a love affair with the man in the green fedora, and how Chenia's initial shame and guilt are overcome; of how the affair threatens to end when Ruben suddenly moves his family closer to the home of the woman who is his lover. And Devorah tells us how the increasingly complex and comical deceptions that accompany her parents' infidelities come to infuse and dominate their lives, how the marriage finally ends, and how another marriage is made--a solid marriage, a different kind of marriage. But Chenia is Chenia, still sometimes longing for the pull of danger and the tumble of the Atlantic Ocean, for a glimpse of a green fedora.

Swimming Toward the Ocean is a novel that both touches and entertains us with its portrayal of the human heart.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in Brooklyn and uptown Manhattan in the 1950s, Flannery O'Connor Award-winner Glickfield's (Useful Gifts, 1989) first novel employs a seductive narrative voice. The atmospheric story focuses on Chenia Arnow, a Russian-Jewish immigrant wife and mother whose emotional turmoil shapes the life of her unwanted but not unloved youngest daughter. Looking back from the vantage point of adulthood, Devorah reconstructs her mother's life, beginning with the 45-year-old Chenia's efforts to abort her third child or, failing that, commit suicide. Bright but unschooled, Chenia agrees with her philandering husband, Ruben, on only one thing: they cannot afford another baby. Chenia gives birth to Devorah despite fears and superstitions, raising her alongside Devorah's older siblings in Brighton Beach until Ruben moves them closer to his girlfriend in Manhattan. Although Ruben regularly lies, it is Chenia who collapses with guilt when four-year-old Devorah is accidentally injured during Chenia's quarrel with her shoe salesman lover. In anguish, Chenia briefly disappears, leaving precocious, outspoken Devorah in the care of New Jersey relatives. Spiritual insights and financial gifts from unexpected sources fortify the family as it rebuilds itself, and the tale heads toward a teary-eyed conclusion where two generations forgive each other's weaknesses and their own. Glickfield's prose is precise, poignant and painfully personal, and her tale touches many emotional hot buttonsDunfulfilled talent, repressed desire, self-defeating despairDwhile almost perfectly recreating the physical and psychological geography of the times. Obvious plot devices (a financial windfall, a new suitor, an old lover) move the narrative along, but it is feisty Chenia and perpetually curious Devorah who invest the novel with glorious life. (Feb. 21) Forecast: Having captured a time and place with perfection, Glickfeld's novel may resonate with many readers. Word of mouth will be a factor in its success.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Set in Brooklyn and later Manhattan, Glickfeld's first novel chronicles the life of Russian Jewish migr Chenia Arnow. The book is about domestic affairs (Chenia's first husband, Ruben, is a flashy three-timer; her second is a good, good man but lacks spark) and affairs (partly Ruben's but primarily Chenia's with a charming but dishonest shoe store manager who drives her more than once toward suicide). The book is warm, funny, human, and honest, and it's interesting to watch Chenia's character evolve from wisecracking, superstitious new migr to something deeper; throughout, one is reminded of a Carol Shields book. There is a distracting narrative device, though, whereby all sorts of things (e.g., love scenes between Ruben and his mistresses) are narrated by Chenia's precocious youngest daughter, even though she could have no knowledge of them. Theoretically, this should render the narrative unreliable, but fortunately most readers care little for narrative theory, and the book's charms will win them. Recommended.DRobert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (February 13, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375408924
• ISBN-13: 978-0375408922
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,938,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carole L. Glickfeld, a CODA (child of deaf adults), was born in Brooklyn and grew up in the Inwood section of Manhattan, attending P.S. 152, J.H.S. 52, George Washington High School. She graduated from City College of New York and is a Ph. D. program drop-out from Hunter College. She began writing in the 5th grade. "I must have been destined to be a fiction writer becauase the first story I recall writing is about a boy and his dog and I didn't know anything about either." A voracious reader, she wrote stories, poems, essays and even novels on her own ("really I was a closet writer"). She was a "salad girl" in the Catskill Mountains and, in New York, worked as an office temp and as a "contingent" (going from department to department) in Macy's. After moving to Seattle, she had a number of jobs in politics (coordinating campaign offices) and government (working for the State Legislature and the City of Seattle). While she was Director of the Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens in Seattle, a friend invited her to a writers' conference. "It was so inspiring that I reduced my office hours and quit not long after to become a full-time writer." Her first commercial story was "Out of the Lion's Belly," which appears in the best-selling anthology WHEN I AM AN OLD WOMAN, I SHALL WEAR PURPLE. Another commercial story was published in FIRST FOR WOMEN. "I'm more interested in literary fiction," she says; "characters that have depth, language that is fresh, stories that are not only plausible but which shed light on the human condition." A member of her writers' group asked if she had ever written a story about her background with deaf parents. That inspired a story she took to a workshop with Marilynne Robinson. "It had a terrible title but after Marilynne told the class that it's a story about what Ruthie's mother knows, I retitled it to 'What My Mother Knows.'" Robinson told Glickfeld that she should write more stories about the same characters. "I know good advice when I hear it," Glickfeld says. The stories became the collection USEFUL GIFTS, about a family with deaf parents and hearing children, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Fiction. Subsequently, she published numerous stories, essays and poems. Her novel SWIMMING TOWARD THE OCEAN (Knopf), about the lives and loves of an immigrant couple as told by their daughter over four decades from what she knows, using her imagination to fill in the gaps, won the Washington State Book Award. Glickfeld has taught creative writing in Michigan, Alaska and Washington State. Her day job now is working with people on their manuscripts, editing, coaching, critiquing. She loves all the arts, is a movie junkie (see her mini-reviews on her website: www.caroleglickfeld.com), and studies ballet.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Eminently readable and intelligently written, March 3, 2001

By 

Lynn Adler - See all my reviews

This review is from: Swimming Toward the Ocean (Hardcover)

Set in Brooklyn and Manhattan in the 1950's, the story centers on Chenia, a 45-year-old Jewish-Russian immigrant, wife and mother of three children. In an unusual narrative and plot convention, the story opens with the as yet unborn third child, a daughter named Devorah, telling the story, most of it recreated from her imagination and from her perspective as an adult 40 years later. The central story revolves around Chenia's miserable marriage to Ruben, a philanderer, a liar, a con man, who works in the garment district. He is at best indifferent to his family, and often worse. With the two older children in school, Chenia once again finds herself pregnant. Unable to successfully abort the third child, uneducated, trapped in a loveless marriage, having never learned English well enough and still very much a greenhorn, the only option she sees is suicide. Through a set of circumstances, she is saved from this fate and enters into an off and on again affair of her own with one Harry Taubman. When Harry eventually lets her down, too, she again nearly commits suicide, but is rescued at the last minute.

Down the road, as her children are getting older, through a financial twist of fate, she is able to divorce Ruben and eventually marry good-hearted Sol. From husband A to husband B, we see the children shunted aside and left to grow up on their own, but Devorah is the child who has it the worst. It is almost a miracle that she even survives in this household of neglect and it is no wonder that as a 40-year-old and a mother to be herself, she asks the dying Chenia, 'do you really love me?' Although Chenia never fully grows up, she does come to a sense of peace years later. The last chapters and the final denouement work well in bringing the story to closure as Devorah tries to figure out the truth and what it means for her own future.

The story is told in strong simplistic language that never sentimentalizes Chenia's heartbreaking life or the life of her children. The other characters in the story are also complex and recognizable. Swimming Toward the Ocean is written with intelligence, depth, and compassion. This is not a feel good story or a comfortable one, but one which will resonate in the hearts and minds of readers.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unforgettable and Utterly Compelling, June 12, 2001

By 

C. Ristaino (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Swimming Toward the Ocean (Hardcover)

I have been a fan of Carole Glickfeld's for some time now. When I discovered that Swimming Toward the Ocean was to be published in eight long months, it was all that I could do to prevent myself from calling up the bookstores and demanding that they push up their deadlines. I had already read Carole Glickfeld's first book of short stories, Useful Gifts, and could not wait to read something else by this gifted and talented author.

The day I purchased Carole Glickfeld's novel, I read the first few pages while standing near the checkout counter and from that point on I could not put it down. Carole Glickfeld is so wise. I am so emotionally attached to her characters. I want to meet them on the street. I have questions for them. I love them. My mother also sailed through Swimming Toward the Ocean. On the phone she said, "Oh, Chenia-what a character...and she loved her children so much." We spoke about the intricate lives of Chenia and her family for what could only have been more than an hour, and once I had hung up the phone, my husband asked, "Who were you talking about?" "Chenia," I responded. "Do I know Chenia?" he asked. "No," I answered and pointed to Carole Glickfeld's book. It's a hardback, the type of book one treasures.

Let me tell you a little bit about Chenia, but not too much! Chenia is a Russian immigrant who is pregnant with her third child when the novel opens. Although she is married, Chenia has never experienced a loving relationship with her husband. What follows is a comical, intricate and unique description of Chenia's process of self-discovery, as told through the omniscient eyes of her youngest child. Chenia's unique personality is enhanced by the fact that her English is often spoken in a foreign syntax and peppered with Yiddish words throughout the novel. It is in this colorful manner that we are introduced to Brighton Beach, the Atlantic Ocean, the cloisters of Manhattan, the shoe store salesman, the opera, the underbelly of the Coney Island boardwalk, a factory fire, and the infidelities of a marriage. Chenia's fear of the evil eye, her superior wit and intelligence, her likeable and humane spirit, and her vivid sensuality and passion along with her compelling story make this a must read for men and women alike. I guarantee that you will cancel plans to finish Carole Glickfeld's novel and when you have read from cover to cover, you will mourn the loss of Chenia's world, considering her a dear and important friend.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful characters; moving story, June 12, 2001

By 

MacKenzie Bezos (Bellevue, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Swimming Toward the Ocean (Hardcover)

I really cannot imagine someone reading the incredibly intriguing first few scenes of this book-a woman's account of her mother's attempts to abort her-- and choosing to set it aside. Jewish-Russian immigrant Chenia Arnow is a fascinating and vivid character-the type who leaves an imprint in memory as sharp and clear as any person I've met. And the narration by daughter Devorah was a brilliant and daring choice. It is handled with such absolute authority that it causes no confusion, and what the reader gains is a steady and powerful insight into how Chenia's struggles and regrets as mother, wife and mistress must have shaped Devorah's character and life. Glickfeld clearly deserves the acclaim she is receiving. I look forward to her next book.