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The Law of Return (Carnegie Mellon Series in Short Fiction) Paperback – November 27, 1999

by Maxine Rodburg (Author)
In this rich and absorbing collection of linked stories, Maxine Rodburg's narrator looks back at her family, their formative years in Newark and later.... Rodburg's purpose is, as she says, to find those whole lost worlds that we keep in our hearts. This is lovely writing, a wise voice nonetheless filled with yearning, a wonderful cast, a passionate sense of loss, and renewal, a stunning American portrait.
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  1. Print length
    179 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Carnegie-Mellon University Press
  4. Publication date
    November 27, 1999
  5. Dimensions
    5.24 x 0.62 x 8.03 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0887483135
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0887483134
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Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

A replete and vivid portrayal of urban Jewish family life emerges from this satisfying debut collection of eight interrelated storiesa book similar to, and perhaps influenced by, Allegra Goodmans Total Immersion (1989) and The Family Markowitz (1996). Each story is narrated by Debbie Tarlow, whom we first meet in the late 1960s, when her fathers downtown Newark tavern and their family's fragile peace of mind are threatened by both her globe-trotting older sister Marlene's insouciance and the racial riots that decimate the city. This theme resurfaces in the more dreamily reminiscent ``Keer Avenue, July 1967,'' and is ironically echoed in several pieces set during various other times and at parallel crisis-points in Debbie's girlhood and later life as a concerned (often frightened) mother of her own two daughters. ``March of Dimes,'' for example, neatly links the lingering polio scare of the early 60s with Debbie's first real understanding of her culture's own racial and ethnic prejudices. Varieties of awakening to the often contradictory intricacies of religious and social norms are explored with increasingly resonant emphasis in the complex ``Pocahontas in Camelot'' (Debbie's school play about the Indian heroine is juxtaposed to her family's reactions to the 1963 Kennedy assassination and to the shvartzers troubling Newark's middle-class calm); ``The Widower Vissarion,'' which confronts Debbie directly with anti-Semitism but also with her gentle peacemaking mother's urging that ``outsiders could do nothing worse than people could do to themselves''; and especially ``The Orphan,'' which concludes with the mature Debbie's moving valediction at the Miami Beach funeral of her father, an orphan laid to rest, his years of wandering finally at an end. Richly textured, subtly understated: a fine first collection that has both the emotional weight of remembrance and the unity of a well-made novel. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

...[a] powerful new collection... -- The New York Times Book Review, Fran Handman

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Carnegie-Mellon University Press
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 27, 1999
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 179 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0887483135
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0887483134
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.24 x 0.62 x 8.03 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #5,862,830 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)