Customer Reviews

Up from Orchard Street

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

 

 

Eleanor Widmer has written a beautiful memoir of her life growing up on New York's Lower East Side during the 1930s. In the tradition of E.L. Doctorow and Isaac Bashevis Singer, Ms. Widmer has created a poignant portrait of one family's struggle to beat the odds and survive. I had the good fortune to be a student in Dr. Widmer's creative writing classes at San Diego State University, and her stories of growing up poor in New York were lessons for us all. Her charisma, her wit, and her razor-sharp intellect echo through the pages of "Up From Orchard Street." Her voice in these pages takes me back to her classroom of the 1970s. She was an amazing professor and her book is a joy to read. I'm thrilled to see that Random House has published this beautifully-written work. Bennett Cerf, who selected Ms. Widmer for top honors in a writing contest back in the early sixties, would indeed be proud. Eleanor Widmer has left a resplendent legacy for her students, her friends, and her family.

Brady Kelso, Ramona, California

Teenage Manya and her spouse accompanied by their infant son Abraham Jacob left Odessa, Russia for New York, but her husband died during the journey. Manya obtained work at Grenspan's Bakery on Manhattan's Lower East Side. When Jack turned four, Manya sent for her much younger sister seven years old Bertha to live with her and her son.

Her cooking gets Manya a following and soon a typesetter at the Jewish Forward enables her to open her own restaurant on Orchard Street. In the 1930s, Jack works in the fashion industry where he meets and marries the delicate from childhood illnesses but lovely Lil, who is the opposite of her steel magnolia mother-in-law. They have two children and adopt a starving black child whose name sounds almost like Clayton so they call him Clayton. Through the three generations, Manya is the matriarchal soul of this Jewish family, but changes are coming with a cafeteria opening nearby and a trip to Connecticut.

UP FROM ORCHARD STREET is told by one of the grandchildren Elka about life in a 1930s Jewish family, which centers on "Bubby" Manya. Elka provides insider depth to life in the Lower East Side of New York as few writers have accomplished. With photos from the era and specific historical places (my Bubby used to take me shopping on Orchard Street, which was in the early 1960s the best bargain around if you were willing to negotiate) included in the fine plot, readers will conclude that this is a superb biographical fictionalized account paying homage to Eleanor Widmer's bubby as well as to the late author who recently passed away.

Harriet Klausner

I found this story charming and enlightening regarding the Jewish immigrant experience in NYC in the 1930's. I came to love the characters and was sad when the book ended because I felt like I knew the characters personally. I loved the way the author combined a partial memoir and a social history of the times. Definitely worth reading or giving as a gift. Would make a great movie!

In her afterword, the late Eleanor Widmer describes her book as "part memoir, part social history, and part fiction." As I read, it seemed that memoir dominated both style and content -- not a good thing, in this case.

This book is episodic, describing one event after another. Many of those events are disproportionately detailed at best, and often serve no clear purpose in the story. They do not move the plot further or provide deeper insight into the characters. They are not even particularly interesting -- at least, not to the reader. Like many memoir writers, Widmer fails to distinguish between anecdotes which are significant to her (because they happened to her) and those which would stimulate the reader and enhance the book.

Beyond the vague plot line, the characters fail to endear themselves. Manya, the most clearly drawn, apparently inspires grand passion in a wide variety of men but only falls in love with the one who lies and abandons her -- not once, but twice. She also rejects other men who appear to be more genuine in their affections. This is at odds with the characterization of a woman who appears to be strong and down-to-earth -- the only mature, responsible adult in the novel. While this contradiction is not unrealistic, it is also not explored in sufficient depth so as to be comprehensible to the reader.

Manya, and her entire family by extension, also inspire a great deal of admiration and extreme acts of largesse (e.g., an offer of a large apartment in Manhattan, rent-free, for an entire year) from more fortunate individuals throughout the book, particularly the family doctor, a wealthy uncle, and a Connecticut family who hosts them (for pay) as vacationers. The reasons for this are unclear -- certainly, the characters fail to evoke similar responses from the reader. For the most part, my reaction to Manya was limited to a vague sense pity for her as the book's martyr figure. Jack and Lil disgusted me as two incredibly self-absorbed people and neglectful parents; Willy's distinguishing features were physical sickliness and an apparently pathological level of anxiety (although this, too, was not sufficiently explored so as to be experienced by the reader); and Elka, as other characters inform us, was intelligent and "interesting," overmature and perhaps parentified, but this is something which is told to us rather than shown.

Which brings me to a bone I must pick with the author, who had a doctorate in English Literature and apparently taught creative writing. "Show, don't tell" is a writing teacher's mantra. Widmer apparently attempts to do this by choosing to reveal a great deal to us in dialogue rather than narrative. While this technique has its place, her over-employment of it leads to highly artificial, overly detailed and revealing dialogue, much of which seems to be coming from left field. Interactions between the characters frequently feel forced and contrived as a result, rather than natural and seamless. Characters confide in each other at length, with no apparent purpose to either the spontaneous confession or the choice of recipient. Additionally, having the characters "tell" too much about the characterization and setting defeats the purpose of "show don't tell."

The choice of Elka as narrator also appears contrived. She witnesses, and sometimes participates in, events in which a child has no place. While it is realistic that boundaries between adults and children might be looser in this situation, I had difficulty visualizing a former lover visiting Manya (who must have been in her fifties at the time of this episode) and immediately pulling her [...] out of her dress as her granddaughter held her hand and looked on. Throughout the book, adults confide things to Elka (who has, perhaps, reached early adolescence by the time the book ends) which would be highly complex for a child to grasp -- even a child as supposedly gifted as Elka.

In general, despite efforts to paint this family as "poor but loving," a great deal of dysfunction characterizes them, only some of which could be fairly blamed on poverty. Why are Jack and Lil wearing expensive clothing and attending Broadway shows when their children don't even have clothes that fit them? Why are the family's entire collective assets being pawned for a 2-week vacation in Connecticut? It is surprising that, with such bizarre choices on the family's part, rich admirers are frequently arriving on the scene to expensively bail them out of all sorts of situations. Even more surprising is that these rich admirers are there with open pocketbooks in a dramatic crisis but don't do something about all the rats in the apartment!

Other things are also difficult to understand. How did the family and their Connecticut paid hosts become so close? While the relationship is described, it is never developed in a way which renders it realistic. What is the place of religion in this novel? While the family seems to overtly reject its Jewish heritage in a variety of ways, its influence manifests itself in suprising situations. This contradiction, like others in the book, is definitely plausible in theory; however -- again -- the author's failure to explore this interesting paradox creates confusion rather than empathy on the part of the reader.

I gave this book two stars rather than one because it was readable in spite of its flaws, and something inspired me to finish it (don't ask me what). However, I generally do not enjoy memoirs unless they read like fiction -- interesting to the reader as well as the author. This book, officially billed as a work of fiction, read like a memoir.

Even if you are not a New Yorker, this book tugs on your heartstrings. It is a story of a loving, closely knit family with all the trials and tribulations of immigrants in the lower east side of New York. Our bookclub enjoyed it immensely.

Great immigrant story, starting with one determined woman and spanning several generations.

I could not put this book down! I felt that I was actually living the story. Because I loved this book so much, I even bought a book for my daughter.