Customer Reviews

Weekend

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I am a collector of Grossinger's memorabilia, and have other books written by Tania Grossinger, so had to have a copy of this one. I won't go into the plot here as the other reviewer already did that very nicely, but I just want to reiterate one thing.
There are some very graphically described sex scenes in this book, certainly more than I expected. Mind you, I didn't mind them at all, but thought that that point should be made clear for other readers. If you don't like that sort of thing, this book is not for you!

I liked Weekend by Tania Grossman and Andrew Neiderman. I am a fan of Andrew Neiderman, having read several of his books written as V.C. Andrews.

Weekend is a very fast moving book. It takes place over the busy July 4th weekend at a prestigious resort in the Catskills in the late 1950s and kicks off their season. This resort, as with all resorts in the Catskills at this time, is uncertain of its future because of increased competition from other family vacation destinations. If they can't turn a profit, how much longer can such a large resort continue? With so much at stake, what is the worst that could happen? How about a cholera outbreak? It starts with a Chinese immigrant hired as a janitor at the resort. Soon after he arrives, he gets deathly ill. The hotel's doctor who treats him suspects cholera, but is pressured by the hotel manager to suppress his suspicions until the test results come back. The hotel doctor is torn between his duty as a doctor to protect the public health by being over precautious; and the possible consequences to the reputation of the hotel and its economic future. By the time the results come back to confirm the worst, guests are starting to get sick.

Sound like enough drama? Well, not even close. There is a lot more going on there. Add in the mafia looking to get a piece of the resort; a disturbed pyromaniac teen guest and his nymphomaniac mother; and several other distinctive characters. There is even a budding romance. The cholera outbreak is not the main driving force in this book. I became very interested in the assorted cast and characters and their actions during the weekend.

Warning: I read this book during my lunch break at work and there were a couple of stomach turning scenes. Yuck!

The time is not long past--and might yet return, gas prices willing-- when a weekend at a famous Catskills mountain resort was a prime aspiration of every American east coast red-blooded Jewish-American prince, and princess. On which subjects, presumably, hardly anybody can claim more expertise than Tania Grossinger, author of "Growing Up at Grossinger's", as she grew up at the hotel Grossinger's,owned by her family, one of the most famous in that New York State mountain range. Thus came "Weekend," by Grossinger and Andrew Neiderman, author of "Sisters",who lives in the heart of that mountainous resort area, at South Fallsburg.

In "Weekend", which is about a 4th of July weekend at a famous Catskills resort hotel, everything that can go wrong does, in accordance with our friend Murphy's law. The result is a kind of dry land, Jewish "Poseidon Affair,"in which nobody drowns.

Well, to say that everything that could go wrong did during this horrendous, fictional 4th of July weekend doesn't tell you the hellzapoppin pace at which Grossinger and Neiderman keep their pot boiling. Fire, orgy and plague, a regular 13th century catalog of horrors that would do Ingmar Bergman proud, visit this great hotel; but the result is fun. The plot, mind you, is nothing but a skin of the old Ibsen "Enemy of the People,"as also skinned by, say, "Jaws." But the book is so full of energetic characters and incident as to cover the bald spots.

There's Melinda Kaplan, nymphomaniac divorcee, her pyromaniac son Grant: Ellen Golden, who's been widowed and left to run the hotel on her own, her teenaged daughter Sandi, who's growing up at a bad time and place; Fern Rosen, the shy would-be swinging single; and Manny and Flo, the battling Goldbergs. And there's lots of hot sex.
There are also, oddly enough, occasional passages that read as if they've been translated from the Yiddish, as "Ever since legalized gambling had been introduced in Las Vegas, there was speculation it would some day also be approved in New York State. As early as January of '58, rumors were rampant that the proposition would be passed by the legislature and put to the voters in the form of a referendum in the next election."

But if you ever wanted to know how many eggs a great Catskill hotel bought in a week at its heyday, it was 27,000; and they had an employee that spent the entire day sitting in front of two barrels cracking the eggs open, whites and yolks in one barrel, shells in the other; then this is the book for you. It's light,quick, fun reading, and one of the cheapest weekend's entertainments to be had.