Review by Booklist Review
Attenberg sets up her entertaining and empathic eighth work of fiction around a Scrabble board in the Chicago suburbs in 1971. "This whole family was nervous." Teenage sisters Nancy and Shelly Cohen are formidable players, but their mom, Frieda, plans to win and knows Shelly is her only competition. Dad Rudy just wants everyone to have fun. Then it's 1976 and Rudy, after already surviving so much, including the Holocaust, is gone from cancer. With Frieda's drinking out of control and Nancy away at college, Shelly can't wait to escape, too, and with her brain it won't be a problem. The novel advances like this, years at a time, as Nancy gets pregnant and marries her college boyfriend; Shelly gets a Seattle tech job working on newfangled cellular phones; and Frieda moves to Miami with a friend. Attenberg (All This Could Be Yours, 2019) knows how to imperil her characters and love them at the same time. Quite a lot happens--careers begin and flourish, love affairs start and end, addictions meet their match--and, as time ticks up to the late aughts, those little phones start to change everything. But much remains the same, too, and readers will happily sit with these women through it all.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Attenberg (The Middlesteins) chronicles the lives of the dysfunctional Cohen family over four decades in her nuanced latest. The opening scene, set in 1971 Chicago during a game of Scrabble, delineates their fraught dynamics. Frieda, the mother, sneaks away to take shots of Slivovitz, then berates her 16-year-old daughter, Nancy, for playing a three-letter word ("That's all you have to show me"?). Her husband, Rudy, a gay Holocaust survivor and loving father to Nancy and their brainiac younger daughter, Shelly, wonders if the couple made the right decision to be together. After Rudy dies the next year from heart failure, Frieda grows more critical of the girls, prompting Nancy a few years later to move in with her college boyfriend, Robby, with whom she's unexpectedly pregnant, and Shelly to accept a scholarship to UC Berkeley. In the late 1980s and '90s, Nancy and Robby's daughter, Jess, becomes enamored with Shelly, an innovator in cell phone technology, while Frieda lives in Florida and works in elder care. Attenberg brings the disparate threads together as Frieda falls ill in the 2000s and the sisters must decide whether they'll care for her. There isn't much of a plot, but the novel is carried along by deliciously realistic descriptions of the Cohens' complex relationships. It's an admirable portait of a distinctly unhappy family. Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown Ltd. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
The Cohen women--mother Frieda and daughters Shelly ("the smart one") and Nancy ("the pretty one")--wobble and weave their way through the late 20th and early 21st centuries in novelist and memoirist Attenberg's (All This Could Be Yours) 10th book. With the death of the family's patriarch, closeted Holocaust survivor Rudy, each woman goes her own way; both daughters are eager to escape Frieda's sharp tongue and angry parenting. Math whiz Shelly heads to the West Coast to be part of the burgeoning computer scene, while Nancy gets pregnant and marries her cagey college sweetheart. Frieda moves to Miami, where she nearly drinks herself to death. Glimmers of humor lift a narrative that time-hops and head-hops, as the Cohen women come together and fall apart, squabble and make up. Nancy's quietly rebellious daughter Jess joins the fray, ping-ponging between her aunt and her mother. Some of the many side characters seem to function mainly as plot points, especially the men, who are thinly drawn, but this only accentuates the maddening vividness of the Cohen women. VERDICT Attenberg's fans will enjoy this novel, as will those who like sharply observed dysfunctional mother-daughter stories.--Liz French
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Attenberg follows the women of one family for almost four decades, exploring how each woman's self-image and ambitions impact--and are impacted by--the others. In 1971, the Cohens spend Saturday nights as a family playing Scrabble in suburban Chicago. Ailing Holocaust survivor Rudy loves his family but maintains a separate, private life. His wife, Frieda, struggles with anxiety and insecurity. Mild-natured 16-year-old Nancy knows she will always be less special than her brilliant, emotionally intense sister, 12-year-old Shelly. With Rudy's early death a few years later, the family splinters. Frieda moves to Florida and spirals into alcoholic poverty. Shelly becomes a rising star in Seattle's tech startup world. Nancy quits college to have a baby, embracing the debatable security of a shaky marriage. Careerist Shelly cannot relate to defensively domestic Nancy, and both avoid contact with troubled Frieda. In the years that follow, the women's professional and emotional trajectories twist and turn in predictable yet sometimes surprising ways. Nancy's daughter, Jess, grows into a young woman more comfortable in her skin (literally, given her tattoos) than her forebears and becomes their point of connection. While Attenberg organizes the narrative around vaguely ironic subject headings--"Affairs," "Emergencies," etc.--her message is clear: Belonging to a family can be redemptive, whatever its deficiencies. Sexual identity and secrecy are other major themes. Undercurrents of romantic love between women sprout and flourish, while male characters fare badly. Only Rudy, whose homosexuality remains a secret until uncovered by Shelly and a delighted Jess years after his death, is lovable. The straight men are detestable. Both Nancy's husband and Shelly's boss do considerable harm thanks to "wandering dick disease." Shelly's husband is an obnoxious irrelevance. Attenberg can be harsh; her wry authorial voice creates an emotional distance even from the women, as do her occasional asides telegraphing the future. But the vicissitudes of her characters are undeniably absorbing. A sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter take on family dynamics. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
