The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
My rating: 5/5 cats
oh, jami attenberg… i ♥ the way you write.
this book is like richard scarry’s busytown. you and the om narr are just looking down at a scene unfolding, and you are watching everyone be very very busy. edie is busy eating herself to death, her estranged husband richard is busy trying to re-enter the dating pool in his sixties, their children are busy resenting their father for leaving their mother in her illness, their grandchildren are busy preparing for their b’nai mitzvah, rachelle the perfect daughter-in-law is busy trying to control everyone… it is a busytown indeed. and of course you focus on lowly worm, because he is the best, and that cat… but then you start to notice all the other things happening on the periphery. what is that hippo up to?? who is that badger? and this book, told in a multitude of voices, will eventually address all the players and give them an opportunity to comment on the situation, as they see it. View Spoiler »
jenna blum has called this “the jewish corrections,” and i can see that, but although franzen also blurbs this, i think this is less…turgid than the corrections, which i loved, by the way, but you know what i mean. and also – less poop in this one.
the middlesteins is definitely about family dysfunction, but my memory of the corrections is that it is bleak and hopeless and nobody wins. this is not a jolly rollicking book, but it is less relentlessly soul-killing than that other book. there are great scenes of tenderness and opportunities for hope in the bonds of family and love.
the story leaps through time and voice, where edie’s chapters are titled after her weight at the time of the action, and the om narr is casually dropping facts about things that happen in the future, outside the scope of the book’s parameters, which is something i always love in my books. the seeds of future events are planted throughout, but it doesn’t stop you from wanting these characters to make different choices, because you root for them and you want everyone to be happy, but after you finish the story and have that melancholy tinge following you around for the rest of the day, you realize it was all perfectly told, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
my very favorite parts are in the dynamic between richard and his granddaughter emily, who is a stubborn, resentful little girl, just starting to assert her individuality the way all teen girls do.
Josh got in first, Emily pausing with her hand on the door, starting a staring competition with her grandfather that she almost instantly comprehended – he could see her bite her lip – she was never going to win. Don’t you understand, he wanted to say, I invented the staring contest? Don’t you understand that, as far as you know, I invented everything?
and later in that same chapter:
It was a silent car ride home; the children wisely kept their phones in their pockets, so it was just the sound of their breathing, the car engine, a light-rock station playing barely above mute. In their driveway they got out of the car before he had even turned off the engine and darted outside. Why were these children always running away from him? Didn’t they know that he loved them with all his heart?
uuuuugh. just love it.
i apologize for reviewing a book four months before its release, but you gotta remember this one, and when it comes out, go get it. you can read her other three books while you wait. i have only read Instant Love so far, but based on my love for both of the ones i have read, i will definitely be going after those other two…
