Cynthia Ozick has been known for decades as one of America's most gifted and extraordinary storytellers; her remarkable new novel has established h...
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May 22, 2007
Sara
rated it: 
This was a reasonably satisfying read -- good stuff for curling up in bed during a cold night -- but the story of a wildly disaffected, almost schizoid nanny in the house of a family of German immigrants coughs and sputters at its core. The narrator's complete lack of affect is supposed to do something, but exactly what is never clear. Equally unclear is what the poorly disguised retelling of A A Milnes' own alienated son is doing in this book. If you approach it as a sweet compendium of idioma
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Jul 02, 2010
Edith
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This book was NOT the thrill I anticipated after listening to Ann Patchett recommend it on NBC’s Book Club. She RAVED about this story effusively, calling it “all books for all people”. The story line sounded interesting…a displaced immigrant Jewish family in 1930’s New York state needing to hire a young girl for unspecified help….and had me running to the library to find this book.
I just do not get it. I found myself having to doggedly PLOW through this story (Julia’s words of “neve More...
I just do not get it. I found myself having to doggedly PLOW through this story (Julia’s words of “neve More...
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Feb 20, 2009
Sarah
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I'm not really sure what to say. This book had been sitting on my shelf for a few years at least and I was excited to finally pick it up because it looked so cool. It was really disappointing. The writing was well-done but the narrative - there was something so strange about it and not in a good way. It was just a huge emotional disconnect, I think, between the narrative and the story. Going into this, I had no idea that it was supposedly a thinly veiled representation of the saga of A.A. Milne'
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Feb 05, 2009
Heir revisits many of Ozick's trademark themes, which stem from her own heritage: European versus American culture, scholarly pursuits, cultural and class conflict, and exile, both real and imagined. As befitting an author of great intellectual range, Ozick exhibits extraordinary knowledge about her subjects, from Victorian literature and religious mysticism to Depression-era New York. Heir, a captivating, polished story about three sets of lives, resembles in its compassionate questioning of li
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Dec 13, 2010
I picked up this book in Delhi, off a pavement seller peddling second-hand books for a pittance, primarily because it looked interesting and light, and I thought something cheerful would be nice. I would hesitate to call this either cheerful, or light, but it wins on the interesting scale. Heir to the Glimmering World is not, as the title might suggest, a book about fantasy or adventure, or even about inheritance (well, at least, not much).
It's about a girl, working as a governess to More...
It's about a girl, working as a governess to More...
Dec 10, 2010
Roko
rated it: 
I have only read one other novel by Cynthia Ozick, the Puttermesser Papers, and this book has a very different feel. I preferred the Puttermesser book, which struck me as being very inventive and in the realm of magical realism with a dash of New York Jewish humor. This novel doesn't have that kind of fantasy aspect. In other words, everything that happens in the novel could actually happen in real life. Also, it's more serious, and kind of sad.
However, I did enjoy reading this book, More...
However, I did enjoy reading this book, More...
Nov 15, 2009
Katherine
rated it:
"The shift key had a habit of getting stuck, so that I would type a line allin capitals, as if the phrases were shouting back at me" (63)
"She held up a pair of unlikely shapes--each one a circle of fangs--and snapped them together, efficiently, like the jaws of a crocodile. Or like a navigator squeezing the legs of a caliper in order to shrink the world" (72).
"...she chewed her toast with angry lethargy" (97).
"...half-reclining, books lying op More...
"She held up a pair of unlikely shapes--each one a circle of fangs--and snapped them together, efficiently, like the jaws of a crocodile. Or like a navigator squeezing the legs of a caliper in order to shrink the world" (72).
"...she chewed her toast with angry lethargy" (97).
"...half-reclining, books lying op More...
May 23, 2010
El
rated it:
The Mitwisser family are exiled Germans living in upstate New York during the Depression, and Rose Meadows, the narrator, answers an ad in the paper looking for rather vague household help. Her duties wind up being different things for different members of the family, depending on their needs. The Mitwissers's benefactor is James A'Bair, a malcontent who is popular because of his father's children's story books about the Bear Boy, ie James. James is loosely based on Christopher Milne, the son
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Jan 29, 2011
Jessie
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Finally an author with a masterful command of the beauty and intricacies of the English language. Half the book follows the narraror, hired as half scribe half caretaker. A fine portrait of the various stark disenchantments of childhood, the woundedness of exile of all kinds, and the inscrutability of the ones who are supposed to guide us. The author is unsentimental about children and describes the mind-numbing nature of the options left to girls of lower middle class upbringing, the ob
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May 16, 2010
Shelley
rated it:
All of these characters were so emotionally disconnected from one another, and the narrator's lack of emotion, made this a hard read. I felt like the narrator was beating into me the need to feel something for the other characters, yet not giving a reason to do so. She didn't care enough about anything. She was also slow-witted, not realizing things that were happening in the family and in her own relationships, until it was far too late to do anything about it. I felt like someone was telling a
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Feb 24, 2009
Chana
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Vivid, beautiful writing. The only quirk in the writing which bothered me was the author's tendency to give more than one description to the same thing. She would give one descriptive sentence, then say "or" and give another. I found that instead of remembering both ideas they would cancel each other out and I would not remember either. Nevertheless, it is vibrant writing that involves the reader and is very affecting. I was disappointed in Bertram, hurt for Waltraut, put off by E
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Oct 16, 2011
Pam
rated it: 
I know this book was a finalist for all kinds of awards and picked by a lot of bookclubs but for me it was a bunch of mishmash. It might have been a good story but it was told in such a way that reading it just became a lot of work for me. I have to give it one star because I cared enough to finish it although now that I did, I don't think it was actually worth it.
The main character Rose, who I wanted to like and root for, just didn't do enough to help herself or stick up for herself and f More...
The main character Rose, who I wanted to like and root for, just didn't do enough to help herself or stick up for herself and f More...
Feb 04, 2012
Jeanne
rated it:
Time: 1935
Place: New York
Protagonist: 18-year-old Rose Meadows
Orphaned at eighteen, Rose Meadows sets out to make her way in the world. Her only connection is her cousin, Bertram, who is only a distant cousin by marriage. She answers an advertisement for a position with a professor, and the adventure begins. . .
Professor Mitwisser and his family are German refugees, and their lifestyle is a little strange, to say the least. With a reclusive wife, five c More...
Place: New York
Protagonist: 18-year-old Rose Meadows
Orphaned at eighteen, Rose Meadows sets out to make her way in the world. Her only connection is her cousin, Bertram, who is only a distant cousin by marriage. She answers an advertisement for a position with a professor, and the adventure begins. . .
Professor Mitwisser and his family are German refugees, and their lifestyle is a little strange, to say the least. With a reclusive wife, five c More...
Aug 15, 2009
Kathleen
rated it:
Because I had recognized the author's name and because this book was a *remainder*, I picked up this hardcover version a few months ago. Buying it was a bargain, reading it made it that much more so. It has wondrous prose in the telling of a layered story of life in Berlin and in America in the mid 1930s. It is modeled after a Victorian novel, but that is not apparent until the ending chapters. It is devoted to the life of the mind --so much so that many of the themes have to be researched as th
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May 05, 2008
Alison
rated it:
I don't quite understand the reviewers who've said that they loved the spunky narrator: this novel is organized around the observations of someone who represents an absence of emotional and intellectual connections and understanding, and even of personality, because she is isolated from everything she's trying to observe. Ozick did this deliberately, and I can see why, but it doesn't serve her material: it's a stagy kind of trick that funnels interesting ideas and scenes and characters throug
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Dec 21, 2008
Roxanne
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Apr 19, 2008
Toby
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This was an author that was recommended by Michael Chabon in an interview that I read, & having the great respect for him that I do, I tried out his suggestion.
And, I struggled with it for a good 175 pages.
But:
It was worth it. Ozick is a fabulous writer, and a very original word-user (word artist? word-smith? whatever...obviously much better than me!). I will read her other works, but I will not read them without a dictionary at my elbow. In 'Heir to the Glmmering World', she m More...
And, I struggled with it for a good 175 pages.
But:
It was worth it. Ozick is a fabulous writer, and a very original word-user (word artist? word-smith? whatever...obviously much better than me!). I will read her other works, but I will not read them without a dictionary at my elbow. In 'Heir to the Glmmering World', she m More...
Feb 10, 2008
Anne
rated it:
Cynthia Ozick, like her admirer David Foster Wallace, is both a great storyteller and a brilliant and erudite thinker; accordingly her work is dense and supposedly intimidating. (The Shawl is sometimes described as her most "accessible" book; I'm making the leap here that her other work is perceived of as to some extent inaccessible.) Again like DFW -- and sort of on the model of Seinfeld, at its best -- Ozick invokes a cast of many characters (only one of whom, Ninel the communist act
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Feb 02, 2008
Rick
rated it:
Fine novel set in upstate NY and the Bronx in the 1930s about a family of German exiles, an orphaned young woman, and a lost soul whose father immortalized him and left him independently wealthy but totally at sea while using him as the Christopher Robin-like hero of a universally popular set of children’s books. No one has a home and various alliances are formed in lieu of true family connections. The main narrator is the orphaned woman, whose father taught math but was more interested in gambl
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Jan 16, 2008
Katie
rated it:
I got this book on a whim last summer while leaving town for a camping trip. It was recommended to me by the Powell’s website when I searched for a book by another author. I want to love this book. I love its female character and found her story to be very interesting… it is the rest of the characters that I have had a difficult time identifying with. In fact, I just find them annoying.
I put the book down last summer after my camping trip was over and recently picked it up to give i More...
I put the book down last summer after my camping trip was over and recently picked it up to give i More...
Dec 26, 2011
Linda
rated it:
I thoroughly enjoyed the storyline in this book and really like the quirkiness to the plot. I thought Ozick did a great job at conjuring up the book's characters (very vivid and complex) so there was a good deal of character development implemented throughout the book. It was also the first time I was exposed to religious mysticism of any kind so that was memorable and fun as well. The only hesitation with the religious mysticism is that the narrative voice tends to thread and weave in-and-
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May 17, 2009
Diane
rated it:
A novel set in the 1930’s in New York City. An immigrant German family lives on the largesse of James, whose father used him as a model for the wildly successful series of childrens’s books, similar to Winnie the Pooh. Rose is an orphan whose cousin has exiled her from his home because of his relationship with a communist, Ninel. Complicated relationships and the limits set by circumstances and pride are at the heart of the stories told/
Jun 21, 2009
Sherhazade
rated it:
I only made it so far into this book before deciding I had given it enough time. I didn't care for any of the characters and found some quite frustrating. When you start wanting to slam a character's head in the book itself, it's not a good sign. I picked the book up at the library because I admire her famous short story "The Shawl" so much. Perhaps I should try more short stories by her. I know with Joyce Carol Oates, it's her stories I really like best of her work.
Dec 13, 2008
Lena
rated it:
Would have given four stars because Ozick's writing kept the pages turning. There were some interesting premises within the novel that could have been separate novels in and of themselves. But I gave three stars because the relationships among the characters never really went anywhere and the plot clumsily bumped along until the end just sort of arrived. Ultimately, I felt like all the great writing went to waste.
Jun 09, 2011
Beck
rated it:
This was pretty depressing. For a novel, I was surprised that I couldn't relate to any character in the book. Not at all. The story was fine in itself and the writing was quite poetic. However, that same writing presented unlikeable characters.
Additionally, most of the novel up to a certain point seemed to be told through the voice of Rose, a girl in her late teens. Then the voice shifted and the story was told through several different characters throughout.
Additionally, most of the novel up to a certain point seemed to be told through the voice of Rose, a girl in her late teens. Then the voice shifted and the story was told through several different characters throughout.
Sep 10, 2009
Leah
rated it:
I have mixed feelings about this book. I felt compelled by it and because of that it went really fast - however, now that's it's over, I'm not sure what I got out of it. It was pretty bleak, and I was anxious for the main character throughout. The writing was good, but it's hard to imagine who I'd recommend this to.
May 02, 2011
Sarah
rated it:
This book was slow and hard to get into, but about half way through I became completely and utterly captivated. The first half of the book was slow, but enjoyable prose nonetheless. I also enjoyed the post-war New York City history lessons and was delighted when I recognized the settings.
The flip was switched for me when the story evolved from history lesson to full fledged scandalous, pedophilic love affair. The individual plot lines ebbed, flowed and intersected at just the right m More...
The flip was switched for me when the story evolved from history lesson to full fledged scandalous, pedophilic love affair. The individual plot lines ebbed, flowed and intersected at just the right m More...
Dec 08, 2010
Shauna
rated it:
So it's about patronage, which is a subject near and terrifying to my heart, and Ozick could have taken it so, so much farther. The language was accomplished, indulgent, stilted, but without the cheap shots that make me put down a book and scowl. I finished. But it felt like taking one for team proficiency.
Mar 25, 2008
Gregory's Lament
rated it:
Oh Cynthia Ozick, what have you done? This book is a hair's breadth away from being brilliant. What made you go awry?
The majority of the story is told from the narrator's point of view. The characters are rich, the plot is compelling and the themes are some other adjective I don't have in mind right now. Then, two thirds into it, the book starts wandering off into chapters told from the third person, and focusing on another character in a tangential story. These chapters are pointle More...
The majority of the story is told from the narrator's point of view. The characters are rich, the plot is compelling and the themes are some other adjective I don't have in mind right now. Then, two thirds into it, the book starts wandering off into chapters told from the third person, and focusing on another character in a tangential story. These chapters are pointle More...
Jan 03, 2011
Kim
rated it:
Absolute poetry -- if you could live on words alone, you'd want this one in a picnic basket everywhere you went. Beautifully researched and surprisingly flavored with sad humor, you won't want to put it down at bedtime... and I, in fact, couldn't.
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