Kaaterskill Falls

Rating:
Summary: clumsy, uneven book
Review: I don't think this book deserves only one star, but I wanted to do my bit to lower the rating. I am amazed at the hyperbolic praise given to this book. Perhaps there aren't many novels that go into the minutae of conservative Jewish life, I don't know. But what I DO know is that some of the prose in this book is as stilted as a 7th grader's essay. Other passages are nicely wrought. But the emotional life seems once-removed and meager. About halfway through the book I started skimming, to hit the highlights. I was engaged by the small bit of plot, yes, but it didn't deserve the number of words she uses to move it forward.

Rating:
Summary: No plot and lifeless characters - a real snorer.
Review: Kaaterskill Falls is about as interesting as a still life painting. It caught my attention for the first 50 pages, but 329 pages of observations of small town life, even if it is within the Orthodox Jewish community, could not hold my attention. The characters never took control of their lives. Life acts on these people, they do not act upon life. I kept waiting for someone to develop a backbone and take charge but it unfortunately never happened.In the end, I was just happy to be rid of these annoying peole and leave them to their own dreary lives. Give me fiction written before the 1960's. Good or bad, those characters have substance. I give Kaaterskill Falls a hearty thumbs down.

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written glimpse into a closed world.
Review: Allegra Goodman has given us a beautifully written glimpse into the closed world of the ultra-orthodox Jew. She shows a wide range of characters who relate to each other, their community and the wider world in various ways.Ms. Goodman's sympathetic heroine struggles to reconcile her own need for fulfillment with her communities' strictures and her family's needs. This is really a good read!

Rating:
Summary: a novel about an artist and her imagination
Review: I found this novel to be very thought provoking. It accurately describes the world of Elizabeth Shulman (for me, the main character) as one that is confining (not necessarily in a bad way). When she sees the painting it evokes in her a passion, defining her as an artist. From then on she is on a mission to create something that is her own, her art if you will. The store represents her individuality and her ability to remain both a part of her summer community and to be independent and artistic. We all feel (or at least I do) heartbroken at the new rav's decision concerning her store, after all she goes from having created something from scratch to book-keeping and taking orders. I would strongly recommend this novel to anyone interested in seeing a mind that has been enlarged, or anyone who loves the romantic writers.

Rating:
Summary: a study of the workings of the imagination
Review: This novel is not about being a rebel and rejecting all you've known in pursuit of the new; it's not about wanting more and acting on that desire. Rather, it's about how to exercise the imagination and enter the imaginative realm while remaining grounded in the realm of your familiar, everyday life. Elizabeth Shulman wants to open a store because she wants to imagine a new role for herself in her own life, a role that isn't, in fact, at odds with the self that she notes constitutes the core of her being. It's no accident Elizabeth decides to open a store, to create something of her own that will contribute to the well being of her community, after viewing (and being inspired by) a painting. We feel for Elizabeth, support her in her efforts, because she does what we wish, everyday, to do: imagine how we can create something we can call our own.

Rating:
Summary: A modest portrait of a microcosmic orthodox Jewish community
Review: Goodman's portrait of this Kirshner community of religious Jews who summer together in the countryside of upper state New York is both sympathetically respectful and sharply observant. It is about being Jewish in a non-Jewish world, about being bone-deep religious in a world where religiosity is not common, about submitting oneself to the dictates of community rules in a society that prides itself on the oppposite. Yet the two contrasting sons of the Rev Kirshner's family seem not unfamiliar, the plight of Elizabeth pulled between the growing sense of her subculture's strictures and the larger but frightening possibilities outside that, the chasm betw3een the older man tied to his sisters and his young wife Nina - these seem part of a microcosm of any world, however small, however specifically different. It does tend to be episodic; it is limited in the range of its displayed emotions. but it is a lovely book.

Rating:
Summary: book to recommend to your friends
Review: I picked up this novel solely because of its nomination for the National Book Award. I was not even sure it was a book with which I would relate, not being Jewish. However, believing that all great literature is universal, I read it.What a perfect delight this novel is! The first thing I thought of was how much I would like to use this book in my Women in Literature class when it reaches paper. The main character is wonderful, and judiciously, yet strongly, attempts to fight the patriarchal world of the Rav and his rules. Anytime someone says to me, "is there anything good to read?", I immediately recommend Allegra Goodman's study of the social contract and one woman's fight to make others see the rules for what they are--restrictive and one-sided.

Rating:
Summary: This book was similiar to watching it rain.
Review: I wanted so much to love this book. It starts out beautifully describing a people, a lifestyle and a part of the country that all deserve the intricate detail that Mrs. Goodman uses to paint their picture. The problem is that after the picture is painted, it just stops. No story, no emotion, nothing. You so want the characters to interact and they simply brush against each other on occassion: even husband and wife, brother and brother. Several of the characters introduced actually dropped out of the story without an explination. I hoped until the last page that this book would "wake up." It was sort of like watching it rain. The author has mastered description, her next work should add a little story to the words.

Rating:
Summary: richly textured and finely wrought
Review: Kaaterskill Falls is a beautiful meditation on the dynamics of family life. Although her milieu is a closely-knit community composed mainly of ultra-Orthodox Jews, Allegra Goodman's nuanced observations, revealed thoughtfully, inform universally, beyond the legalistic strictures of the Kirshners. The jealousies, desires, needs and aspirations of her characters are sharply realized, yet tempered with ambivalence and subsumed by a discipline based on higher loyalties to sacred hierarchy. The results are subtle explosions within, frustrations from wanderlust, and small satisfactions in the everyday. Goodman's prose, without a hint of hyperbole, is as clear and refreshing as a Catskill stream; as illuminating and melancholy as the golden foliage on a mountainside in a brilliant blaze of a fading Indian summer sun.

Rating:
Summary: What a Subtle, Wonderful Read
Review: There may not be a lot of action, nor is there much humor, but the author's prose and pace is both lyrical and seductive. No doubt Meryl Streep is warming up her New York Jewish accent right now to play the lead character. There is much majesty in this work, which chronicles a life that few of us (including me) could never understand, yet exists for this family of insular, intensely religious people.