Rating: 
Summary: Worthy of the National Book Award
Review: As a librarian I read a good deal, including far too much laboured prose. To my delight I found that Allegra Goodman's use of language in Kaaterskill Falls had a strong appeal. Her prose is lyrical and gentle, and a pleasure to read in a world of hard-edged television sound bits. She evokes wonderful images of a gentler time and place, and her attention to detail echoes that of Charles Frazier (Cold Mountain), who won the National Book Award last year. I myself am not Jewish and rarely read books with a strong Jewish theme, but I found that this novel left me with an affection for the families in Kaaterskill. The world of Goodman's summer families will be familiar to all who have been children, and to most who have been mothers. I was not concerned to validate her details, but felt that I was left with a deeper understanding of the complex world of Jewish life in America.
Rating: 
Summary: informative, enjoyable real life people.
Review: this book is so informative concerning the lives of the orthodox jewish people living in brooklyn ny. i thought i knew pretty much about the everyday living, but ms.goodman really explains how the Rav controls their lives. hope she continues with the same people and tells more about their lives.
Rating: 
Summary: This novel is a slice-of life and its scope is limited.
Review: There is always a problem when you come to a work of art with great expectations. After all, this novel received a National Book Award nomination and critical acclaim. Unfortunately, although I wanted to like this book, I found it slow-moving and rather uninteresting. I kept waiting for something significant to happen and for some grand themes to materialize. Instead, I read about some pedestrian people living in their insular world, going about their business as we all do. To me these people are not particularly noteworthy, nor are their problems all that significant. For a novel to move me, it has to have something more than a depiction of the everyday life of a community. It has to say something more about the human condition in general. My visit to Kaaterskill Falls left me dissatisfied and I won't remember it for long.
Rating:
Summary: Ordinary book about Ordinary people
Review: Although this novel has received excellent reviews in all the major newspapers, it does not live up to its supposed reputation. I had never read either of Ms. Goodman's previous literary efforts, but decided to read it on the basis of the reviews in the New York Times. Since the chief plot of the work revolves arournd the so called Kirshner community theWashington Heights section of New York, I was also interested in reading it as I too have lived there for the last 10 years. Its no secret that the Kirshners are in real life the Breuers community of Washington Heights known as KAJ.In my opinion the book fails miserably in conveying to the reader the distinctivness of this refuggee Orthodox German community as compared to other ultra Orthodox communities in lets say Lakewood, NJ,, Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY or other strictly observant communities in Riverdale, NY, and other areas of greater NY. What are the distinguishing features of the Kirshners ? What is their theology,all about, whats is their distinctive religious theology. Rabbi Kirshner must do more than supervise kosher bakeries and answer Halachic inquiries (in real life such functions were carried out by the dayanim of the Breuer community that is the ecclesiastical judges, not the rabbi).Sure we gain tidbits of insight about the community that they are German in origin, anti-Zionist in political orientation and dress in a modern albeit conservative manner. But I failed to gain much insight to their inner spiritual life, to theior spiritual beliefs and similiar concepts.In fact Goodman could just as well been describing some modern Orthodox communities in Teaneck, NJ, Kew Garden Hills, NY and Paramus, NJ , with the omission of 2 or 3 minor details. I find the characters to be pretty shallow and morose, does anyone have a sense of humor ? In addition Ms. Goodman makes numerous factual errors about ultra Orthodox Jewish life. Even a committed Modern Orthodox Jew would not eat Hebrew National products in 1976. Shipping kosher meat with non Jews and non religious Jews would present some serious problems in a ultra Orthodox community. Eating dairy on Friday nights is just not done in any Orthodox communities. But as I stated my chief criticism is the lack of understanding of what the Kirshners are all about.In fact the true drama of the Kirshners is how they fought and lost their battle to retain their distinctive ideology in the New world. Their philosophy of Torah Im Derech Eretz (mentioned just once in the novel) came under attack here by more conservative elements connected with the surviving remnants of the Lithuanian Talmudical academies.And rather than join with their neighbors at Yeshiva University with whom they shared a common outlook, they decided to abandon their ideology in favor a new foreign ideology seeking total withdrawal from the world of ideas and emotions. Rabbi Dr. Joseph Breuer the model for Rabbi Isaiah Kirshner did not leave a son as as his successor rather his subsequent successors have seen as their charge the morphing of this community into a good yeshiva community. This was the real drama of Washington Heights. Nevertheless Ms. Goodman has written a sensative story of several families and their spiritual struggle in a physical world.,
Rating:
Summary: A book that changed my view of the world
Review: The main character Elisabeth is so well developed that I could really feel what it was like to be a member in this totally closed but yet familiar community. I identified with her so strongly that I could predict how she would react and what actions she would take. In addition to this beautiful character development, Allegra Goodman supplied me with a succinct, accurate, and most importantly kind depiction between the closed and protective American Hasidic community and the beautiful world of European Hasidic Jewry that is forever lost. My children's grandparents are survivors and my own grandparents are/were Europeans. Thank you, Allegra, for giving me a piece of my roots within my American background.
Rating:
Summary: I loved this book!
Review: This was the first book by Allegra Goodman that I had read, I am certainly going back to read her others! I felt that the book gave a wonderful inside look into a different culture than mine. It made me (a conservative Jew) feel part of that culture. A must read!
Rating:
Summary: Happy Jewish family life with intricate emotional yearnings
Review: Because Allegra Goodman's The Family Markowitz was so funny, good-hearted and perceptive about the mishegoss in Jewish families, I had no doubt I would read Kaaterskill Falls. KF is not funny like TFM, but after the first few chapters, Elizabeth Shulman seduced me into wanting to know how she would pursue her dreams. She wants freedom in the closed, unfree and patriarchal world of orthodox Judaism. She's unafraid to tell us what she thinks of some people in this community: "Elizabeth often thinks ill of people. She is critical; she resents them, and she can't help it . . . She accuses herself.. .of being .. slightly mean-spirited. She hates incompetence." Well, what Jewish woman worth her kosher salt doesn't hate incompetence! When Goodman allows Elizabeth to open up to us, we open up to her. We root for her when she wants to open a small kosher grocery store in KF and then succeeds at it. We cringe at the smallness and meaness of the new Rav when he takes away her special store. Elizabeth reaches for what she wants, but not at the expense of her family -- they all remain supportive and loving to one another. Like Laurie Colwin's families, no matter how much anguish or loss of self-confidence one experiences, women and men in Goodman's novel bounce back to find joy in life. There are other jewels of characterization in this book: Renee's adolescent search for her freedom and independence; her father, Andras' fighting against what he will lose when his older sister dies and his willingness to see anew his wife; His telling to Elizabeth," This is the United States of America and you can do what you want."; Judge Taylor's unwillingness to let the lakes' beauty be destroyed by an avaricious developer; Jeremy's realization of what his father gave him and why he doesn't want it. Elizabeth listens to the new Rav's call to build the fortress ever higher around their community (kehilla) and senses that what she wants is to know more about the outside world. She will remain a solid and good Jewish mother and wife, but she knows "She has scaled the kehilla's wall and softly lowered herself down to the other side." That she acknowledges her courage and delight in going outside rebuilds her self-confidence. She can, in fact, be whom she pleases.
Rating:
Summary: A SUBTLE, WONDERFUL READ.
Review: This is a wonderful book; subtle and gentle, yet deep and powerful. I am an orthodox rabbi, with a curiosity that is broad, like Goodman's. I loved reading this book. It puts others, like Potok, Regen, and Kellerman to shame, in showing a traditional Jewish community where real people with complexity live and die.
Rating:
Summary: These characters are more real than some people I know
Review: My taste in fiction is wide-ranging, but I am always partial to works where the characters drive the story. These characters were complex and complicated, in a way that is often so hard for authors to express. Through the accuracy of pinpoint-precise vocabulary and an empathy that seeps through onto the page, Ms. Goodman has given us a moving and highly engaging work of art. Thank you!
Rating:
Summary: One of my year's best.
Review: Goodman brings to life the insular community of a family of Hasidic Jews while they summer in a small town in upstate New York. Hasidic Jews, with their different dress and ways, seem exotic, but they are confronted with the same problems and uncertainties as the rest of us, and some of them find answers in their faith while others do not. I saw parts of myself, a Christian, in several characters. Few authors can bring off writing in the present tense, but Goodman is such a talented writer that it seems the only way to tell her story. Interspersed with events in the lives of several Hasidic families are the doings of the local people, who regard the summer folks as essentially irrelevant; as a small towner myself, this rings true. Despite their seeming irrelevance, however, their lives intersect with the locals in various large and small ways, as is bound to happen in a small town. The main character, in a rich cast of people (all of whom are well delineated) is Elizabeth, a Hasidic Jew born in England and now married to an American and the mother of five girls, who, once the youngest reaches age three, discovers that the way to satisfy her longing to create something that is entirely hers is to open a summer kosher store which sells only to members of her Hasidic family. Without revealing any plot secrets, the store plays a large part in Elizabeth's development. The writing is lovely -- the kind of book you don't want to finish.
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