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Chains Around the Grass (Hardcover)

by Naomi Ragen (Author)
3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

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Chains Around the Grass + Women's Minyan + The Saturday Wife
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Based on novelist Ragen's own experiences growing up in an ethnically mixed low-income housing project in the Rockaways, this novel opens a window into the bittersweet world of the Markowitz family as they struggle to make ends meet in 1950s New York City. A first-generation Jewish immigrant with incredible reserves of optimism and ambition, David Markowitz trades in his religious identity for the promised gold of America, believing that "if you really wanted to, if you worked your can off, you could not only get out of Brooklyn, but get Brooklyn out of you." After being conned into making a bad investment that leaves him and his family financially and emotionally bankrupt, David dies suddenly. For the first time in her life, his wife, Ruth, must take sole responsibility for her three children, something that seems overwhelmingly difficult. Ruth manages to enroll her eldest son, Jesse, and her daughter, Sara, at a private Jewish day school. Sara embraces her educational and spiritual environment and finds hope and self-renewal in the form of her parents' lost religion. But Jesse, to his mother's dismay, refuses to attend the school and instead self-educates himself in business so that he can fulfill his father's vision of success. Terrorizing his mother with his unreasonable plans and propositions, he self-destructs. Ragen (The Ghost of Hannah Mendes; Sotah) elaborates on her usual themes, extolling the comforting power of faith in a hostile modern world. Working with familiar characters, plot and setting, she crafts a comforting if somewhat shopworn tale of family, hope, religion and the dark side of the American dream.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.



Review
"Naomi Ragen gives us a magnificent present, a promise kept, page after page. We emerge, washed clean of the grimy tenements, baptized in hope."

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Toby Press; 1 edition (October 10, 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1902881532
  • ISBN-13: 978-1902881539
  • Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,293,822 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Chains Around the Grass
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Customer Reviews

11 Reviews
5 star:
 (4)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:
 (4)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.3 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry, truth and life, November 18, 2001
I read Naomi Ragen's weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post religiously. But I could not understand when she said this was what she had lived her whole life to write. Then I read the book.

This autobiographical novel of family resilience distills many truths that obviously took a lifetime to learn--truths that melt bitterness.

The book weaves several layers together--a of a family's travails, its near ruin in a tangle of poverty, bad decisions and relationships gone sour; a soul's awakening; and family renewal. The poetry of all three resonates throughout in a voice as subtle and profound as it is sensible.

Ragen has given few details when she notes that readers will all feel sure that their "own knowledge would have kept you safe," and then warns, "Of course, you'd be fooling yourself."

Poetry comes in what follows: "It is a false security, that feeling of superiority we have listening to someone else recount the steps to personal disaster because all of us are so very similar--we humans. We feel safe only because the teller is untalented, the truth unconveyed. And so, you must consider the soft building dust underfoot, the newness of the place."

One can only relish Ragen's description, some time later, of a child discovering the value of her own life. "She dropped to her knees, breathless, aware of her own heart pounding like some stranger begging to be let in.... She lay down in the sand. First she wiggled her toes, feeling the air pass through them like the cold touch of metal. She felt a strong sudden consciousness of her ankles and the firm muscles of her calves, the long wonderful stretch of skin, so smooth and soft, that ran from her toes to her hips. She felt aware of her stomach and the softly beating heart in her chest and her mouth and her nose and eyes and ears.

"A nameless joy began to rise inside her, wavelike. She felt it spread, as a wave of breaks and spreads, touching the far-off shore, flooding the sand in a quick deliberate flood. A sudden searing light, like the sun, pierced what had been dark and cold and filled with fear.

" 'I'm alive!' she thought, and was comforted."

Have we not all been in that place? The same child still later astonishes herself and readers with her discovery of her soul and place in the universe. The sense of discovery alone makes this wise novel worth reading. But the book also rewards readers with intense optimism, even when its characters are at their lowest.

With the same poetry that the book opens, it closes: "The echoes moved out of the corners, beating like wingless birds around the room."

I cannot recommend this book or author highly enough. Alyssa A. Lappen

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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Love and faith..., November 4, 2001
This beautifully written tale brings the impoverished Markowitz family to life as their American Dream turns into a nightmare. Set in the 1950's in the projects in The Bronx, those "chains around the grass" are metaphoric as well as physical for little Sara. Her strength of character comes from the strength of her faith and is a wondrous thing to behold. The autobiographical nature of this novel makes it a heart wrenching and compelling read.  
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22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars I've read better by her, February 6, 2002
By Heather (Lafayette Hill, PA United States) - See all my reviews
I typically love Naomi Ragen's book, but this one left a lot to be desired. I believe that she felt that she needed to write a book and this is the first thing that came out of her pen.

While the first half of the book is the story of Dave, the husband, the second half is the story of no one. Depsite the fact that the back of the book leads you to believe it is about the daughter, Sara, she is not the main character in any sense.

There is no story for you to follow and the characters don't develop well. Their characteristics just sort of "appear."

The Jewish thread seems manufactured as if she had to insert it somewhere.

If you want to read a bood Naomi Ragen book, read ANY of the others.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars very depressing story
I really like Naomi Regan's books, but this one is an exception. The story is told of a family that goes from lower middle class to extreme poverty. Read more
Published 8 months ago by susan hartline

4.0 out of 5 stars "Chained up"
I stumbled upon this book while browsing and had it not been for my own personal experiences growing up likewise in a Queens Housing Project, I never would have purchased the... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Tony Castro

5.0 out of 5 stars beautiful in every way
I LOVED THIS BOOK.It made me laugh outloud and it made me cry.Mostly it made me think.

This is a story about real life and not the usual immigrant founding a dynasty... Read more
Published on August 19, 2006 by mbrandi

5.0 out of 5 stars Measuring Your Life with the Right Yardstick
Naomi Ragen is an international bestseller novelist, a writer of and about the core of human life. Chains Around the Grass (The Toby Press, USA, 2003) is the book Ms. Read more
Published on April 20, 2006 by Ernest Dempsey

3.0 out of 5 stars Depressing novel about a family mired in poverty.
Naomi Ragen's four previous novels dealt with Orthodox Jews and their personal problems and struggles. These novels were intensely human, very frank and controversial. Read more
Published on March 9, 2002 by E. Bukowsky

1.0 out of 5 stars skip it
I've read other books by this author and couldn't even finish this one. It was an extremely depressing story and there was far too much philosophical mumble-jumble. Read more
Published on February 23, 2002

2.0 out of 5 stars Not as compelling as previous works by this author
I agree with another reviewer who said that the obviously autobiographical nature of this book would have been better as a memoir than disguise of fiction. Ms. Read more
Published on February 1, 2002

2.0 out of 5 stars One tToo Many Writer's Workshops!
I am a huge fan of Naomi Ragen's earler books, but this one was a real disappointment! Except for the few rays of hope at the books' beginning and its end, I found it to be... Read more
Published on January 13, 2002

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