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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"This one is wonderful.", January 15, 2003
This review is from: The Wholeness of a Broken Heart: A Novel (Paperback)
I'm always drawn to Jewish family sagas, maybe because my own grandparents died when I was too young to ask them for their stories. So at a recent Jewish book festival I loaded up my shopping basket with half a dozen novels. When the cashier reached The Wholeness of a Broken Heart she looked up and told me, "This one is wonderful." She was right. Katie Singer has done a fantastic job of creating four generations of Jewish women who are recognizable, yet never stereotypical. In fact, Hannah's mother, Celia, who inexplicably rejects her daughter once she has left home for college, is the virtual opposite of the stereotypical Jewish mother who never wants to untie the apron strings. The novel is narrated by four generations of women, living and dead -- all in present tense, which some readers dislike, but which I find compelling. The heart of the story though is its exploration of the relationship between Celia and Hannah. The stories told by Hannah's grandmother and great-grandmothers, even though they covered a century of Jewish history, from Cossacks to the Holocaust, seemed to me to be aimed primarily at discovering what went wrong between mother and daughter. To be more precise, the book seems to center on what went wrong with Celia that she could become such a terrible mother. Her daughter, Hannah, might be considered the protagonist, but it was Celia who stoked my curiosity. Despite the explanations offered for Celia's behavior, I never found her a sympathetic character, and of all the characters in this book her actions seemed hardest to swallow (as another reader reviewer mentioned). On the other hand, I found Hannah both believable and sympathetic. True, she is quiet and introspective; very few writers aren't. And nearly all draw on their own family stories for material. I was rather surprised by reader reviews that said Hannah lived the "life of Riley," and needed to "get a life." She has a life, a quiet writer's life, living modestly on a teacher's salary, walking to work rather than buying a car, devoting time to her students and to her own poetry, and stretching a roast chicken into a week's worth of leftover dinners. Would it somehow be more of a life if she spent her time writing ad copy, eating fast food and running up credit card bills? A couple of reviewers, both reader and editorial, also felt the story was contrived. As a writer of novels myself, I know that to create interesting, believable characters and then to have a storyline flow naturally from their behavior is a LOT harder than it looks. Leaving aside the fact that any novel is a contrivance by its author -- characters are fictional people after all -- I found very few places in this novel where the characters' behavior seemed to be dictated by the needs of the plot rather than by their background, upbringing or personality. The only instance I did find, in fact, is when Hannah decides to put off moving to New Mexico to be with the guy she's in love with, electing to remain put so that she can be there for her grandmother, Ida. This would have made sense if she lived in the same neighborhood or even city as her grandmother. But in fact, grandma is in Cleveland, and Hannah lives in Boston, where she talks to her grandmother regularly but manages only a few visits a year. I can imagine Ida -- who wouldn't be Jewish if she didn't want to see her granddaughter happily settled down -- saying, "What? They don't have phones in New Mexico? Planes don't fly from there?" In this one case, I think it was the author, Katie Singer, who needed Hannah to stay where she was. But this is a very minor quibble that detracts very little from a remarkable first novel. For this book, I would give the highest praise a writer can give: This is one I wish I'd written.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
AN OUTSTANDING DEBUT, May 4, 2005
This review is from: The Wholeness of a Broken Heart: A Novel (Paperback)
An accomplished storyteller and practiced observer, Katie Singer delivers The Wholeness Of A Broken Heart, her debut novel, with the surety and panache of a seasoned pro. No small task for this probing tale of the Jewish/American experience as synthesized in the lives of four generations is related in alternating voices, some speaking from beyond the grave.
As each woman speaks a mother/daughter relation is revealed, illuminating one family's legacies of love and pain.
The title, we are told, comes from a Yiddish proverb: "There's nothing more whole than a broken heart." An apt title as 29-year-old Hannah, the story's primary narrator, is in pain. Her mother, Celia, has summarily rejected her only child, leaving the young woman confounded and stricken. Attempting to understand Celia's unexpected distancing, Hannah explores not only her own life but the lives of her antecedents. Especially moving among the voices heard is that of Vitl, a stillborn child, whose powerful description of the oncoming Holocaust stings and disturbs.
All Hannah knows of her father is that he is a social worker whom Celia divorced when Hannah was three. Her childhood is spent with her stepfather and Celia who, despite somewhat erratic behavior, seems to dote on the girl. Their Sundays are spent at the home of Hannah's maternal grandparents, Ida and Moe.
When Ida's voice is heard we learn that shortly after high school graduation in 1920 she found work at a plumbing firm owned by Moe. When he proposes marriage, Ida describes her father's reaction: "`A rich businessman wants you for his wife,' he says, like God has picked me to be queen of the human race." Seeing no alternative, Ida agrees to this loveless match. "Then my lips come together and tighten against my teeth," she says. "Just like a wrench around a pipe."
Moe is more than a regimented manager who "tick-tick-ticks to run his shop," he is an abuser who climbs into bed with their daughter, Celia. Aware of this, Ida is powerless to help. She has "a mind that can't figure out how to feed two girls and house them without a man's help. Other than praying, I can't think of what to do."
Great-grandmother Channa, for whom Hannah is named, was born around 1880 and lived in a tiny shtetl near Kiev. She witnesses the heartless pillaging of the Cossacks until her family migrates to America, "the golden land," where her father labors in a shirt factory, and she meets and falls in love with Meyer.
In retelling these family histories, Hannah also relates her own from the day when Celia abruptly tells her she is no longer welcome at home, through her years at the University of Michigan, to a teaching job in Boston, and meeting Jonathan, a Boston globe photographer with whom she falls in love.
However, as compelling as these narratives are one may weary of Hannah's introspection, continued dwelling on her own happiness. One is tempted to remind her that not everyone has a Brady Bunch mother, and say, "C'mon girl, you're 29 - time to get on with your life!"
That reservation aside, The Wholeness Of A Broken Heart is a promising debut. Ms. Singer has displayed singular narrative gifts as well as a willingness to tackle substantive issues. We look forward to her next work.
- Gail Cooke
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterful tale of four generations, November 10, 2002
Not since Erica Jong's book Inventing Memory have I enjoyed a multigenerational tale as much as The Wholeness of a Broken Heart by Katie Singer. In her debut novel, Ms. Singer who was inspired by family stories presents her readers with four generations of Jewish women spanning two continents beginning in the late 1800's. Told in the voices of the four women of this family, the book reflects these women's own stories set against historical events. Central to the plot is the relationship between the modern day and difficult mother Celia and her dutiful daughter Hannah. And it is Hannah that the stories will someday belong as she begins collecting them as a way of understanding her mother. This is a moving book which captures the readers attention particularly if one is from an immigrant background. Interspersed in the narrative are Yiddish expression which loosely translated provide the reader with a language rich in humor and wisdom. In addition I highly recommend this book to those with a Jewish background whose families may have experienced similar stories and histories. And for those unfamiliar with this culture and traditions of Judaism, it is an opportunity to learn of a way of life which in some respects is sadly gone but in other ways is very much alive. Ienjoyed this book so much that I now fook forward to reading future works by Katie Singer. She is a gifted writer who has provided readers with an excellent first novel. May she have a long and happy life and as we say, "May she have blessings on her head."
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