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Sunday Jews
Hortense Calisher has been hailed as "incisive, intricate and fiendishly intelligent" ( The Nation ) and "among the most literate practitioners of modern American fiction" ( Saturday Review ).
In this new novel, Calisher explores a family united in blood yet divided by ideas. The elder son Charles hopes to be a Supreme Court justice; the family beauty Nell has children by different lovers; the art expert Erika has altered her appearance but still insists on being custodian of the family's Jewishness; and Zach, the artist and manipulator, has two wives. The mother of these disparate siblings is Zipporah-Zoe, an academic, infamous in Israel, born of a well-to-do Boston background but no longer rich. She is intellectual, yet bound by memory to the past, a past that never quite dies.
Challenging them is Bert, the grandson, who becomes a rabbi despite his ambivalence toward Jewish institutions. The buried history of their most significant Sunday visitor, Lev, resurfaces when he brings Debra, the young Sabra nurse and war veteran, to them as his wife--and then vanishes.
A compelling family saga that resonates with today's issues of national and religious identity, Sunday Jews is a tour de force from a writer whose fiction has been compared with that of Eudora Welty and Henry James, and whose ability to delineate our lives is unparalleled.
In this new novel, Calisher explores a family united in blood yet divided by ideas. The elder son Charles hopes to be a Supreme Court justice; the family beauty Nell has children by different lovers; the art expert Erika has altered her appearance but still insists on being custodian of the family's Jewishness; and Zach, the artist and manipulator, has two wives. The mother of these disparate siblings is Zipporah-Zoe, an academic, infamous in Israel, born of a well-to-do Boston background but no longer rich. She is intellectual, yet bound by memory to the past, a past that never quite dies.
Challenging them is Bert, the grandson, who becomes a rabbi despite his ambivalence toward Jewish institutions. The buried history of their most significant Sunday visitor, Lev, resurfaces when he brings Debra, the young Sabra nurse and war veteran, to them as his wife--and then vanishes.
A compelling family saga that resonates with today's issues of national and religious identity, Sunday Jews is a tour de force from a writer whose fiction has been compared with that of Eudora Welty and Henry James, and whose ability to delineate our lives is unparalleled.
694 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
About the author
Hortense Calisher
81 books11 followersHortense Calisher was an American writer of fiction.
Calisher involved her closely investigated, penetrating characters in complicated plotlines that unfold with shocks and surprises in allusive, nuanced language with a distinctively elegiac voice, sometimes compared with Eudora Welty, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Henry James. Critics generally considered Calisher a type of neo-realist and often both condemned and praised for her extensive explorations of characters and their social worlds. She was definitely at odds with the prevailing writing style of minimalism that characterized fiction writing in the 1970s and 1980s and that emphasized a sparse, non-romantic style with no room for expressionism or romanticism. As an anti-minimalist, Calisher was admired for her elliptical style in which more is hinted at than stated, and she was also praised as a social realist and critic in the vein of Honore Balzac and Edith Wharton.
Calisher involved her closely investigated, penetrating characters in complicated plotlines that unfold with shocks and surprises in allusive, nuanced language with a distinctively elegiac voice, sometimes compared with Eudora Welty, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Henry James. Critics generally considered Calisher a type of neo-realist and often both condemned and praised for her extensive explorations of characters and their social worlds. She was definitely at odds with the prevailing writing style of minimalism that characterized fiction writing in the 1970s and 1980s and that emphasized a sparse, non-romantic style with no room for expressionism or romanticism. As an anti-minimalist, Calisher was admired for her elliptical style in which more is hinted at than stated, and she was also praised as a social realist and critic in the vein of Honore Balzac and Edith Wharton.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 22, 2022
Look, this is not a quick summer read. The book is very long, the writing style takes some energy to read comfortably, but it is worth every moment of the effort.
My mother was a voracious reader & someone who never shied away from a difficult book I happened to be visiting when she finished reading Sunday Jews. She immediately handed it to me saying 'it will take some work to settle into this, but you should, it's a wonderful book'. I added it to my luggage & put it in the 'to read' pile when I returned home. My mother died 3 months later. I spent 18 months staring at the book & realized it was time for me to make the effort.
And as she promised, yes, it's a wonderful book. You'll get to know this family, it's rhythms, it's secrets, it's pleasures. Reading Zipporah's words, her observations...her life is calming, comforting & just like that, each day you're looking forward to diving back in to learn & understand more about what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be a Sunday Jew.
Then, as the book concludes, it's specific to my situation, but yours as well. Gathering, saying goodby, being there, moving on, letting it go, always, always remembering...
My mother was a voracious reader & someone who never shied away from a difficult book I happened to be visiting when she finished reading Sunday Jews. She immediately handed it to me saying 'it will take some work to settle into this, but you should, it's a wonderful book'. I added it to my luggage & put it in the 'to read' pile when I returned home. My mother died 3 months later. I spent 18 months staring at the book & realized it was time for me to make the effort.
And as she promised, yes, it's a wonderful book. You'll get to know this family, it's rhythms, it's secrets, it's pleasures. Reading Zipporah's words, her observations...her life is calming, comforting & just like that, each day you're looking forward to diving back in to learn & understand more about what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be a Sunday Jew.
Then, as the book concludes, it's specific to my situation, but yours as well. Gathering, saying goodby, being there, moving on, letting it go, always, always remembering...
March 1, 2021
Sunday Jews was an interesting look at a multi faceted (and denominational) family and how the family’s matriarch, Zipporah, affects the lives of her extended family. As an anthropologist and women’s activist, she has travelled the world, not realizing the effect it may have had on her family. When her beloved husband, philosophy professor Peter Duffy, begins to show signs of dementia, she resolves to drop everything, and everyone, and take Peter to all of the incredible places she has been. As his health declines, she needs help caring for Peter - and this care comes from the most unlikely ‘member’ of the family.
This was not an easy read. It requires thinking and paying close attention to each familial detail. But it was worth it. Just don’t try to read it while you’re doing anything else!
This was not an easy read. It requires thinking and paying close attention to each familial detail. But it was worth it. Just don’t try to read it while you’re doing anything else!
September 6, 2016
I wanted to like this book. I really did. I am a librarian at a small rural branch library and we received a box of this book as a donation. We have a book club that meets monthly and I'm always looking for books that will make a good discussion (that I can get for a price that fits into our very tiny budget.)
The first sentence was over 50 words. This is just bad writing. A writer should use short and long sentences and variations in structure to lead the reader to the story...to engage them. In this case the first sentence was a very long, dark, and twisty corridor that apparently never got to the promised light at the end.
And so was the first sentence, and the first paragraph (which in this case was one and the same) and the first chapter, and so forth. As a reader, I never got to a point where I felt I had made any progress. I was so busy trudging through the avalanche of words that I never connected with the characters, never got invested in the storyline, and ultimately felt that the book was meant to be an exercise in endurance. And in this I failed. I did not endure. I was not able to finish the book, which is in itself, a very rare thing.
In the five years I have been hosting the book club I have never chosen a book that NO ONE liked. There were some that were beloved and some that were despised but they all led to a lively and interactive discussion...until this book. None of the women in my book club liked the book and most didn't even finish it.
I've been harsh in my review, but when I was deciding whether to use this for book club I was swayed by the positive reviews that promised beautiful writing and an engaging storyline. I felt a little mislead so I submit this counterpoint to those reviews.
If there are other book clubs out there looking for interesting reads, I will submit this final thought. In order to have an engaging discussion regarding a piece of literature, the book must be one that people actually WANT to finish.
Happy reading!
The first sentence was over 50 words. This is just bad writing. A writer should use short and long sentences and variations in structure to lead the reader to the story...to engage them. In this case the first sentence was a very long, dark, and twisty corridor that apparently never got to the promised light at the end.
And so was the first sentence, and the first paragraph (which in this case was one and the same) and the first chapter, and so forth. As a reader, I never got to a point where I felt I had made any progress. I was so busy trudging through the avalanche of words that I never connected with the characters, never got invested in the storyline, and ultimately felt that the book was meant to be an exercise in endurance. And in this I failed. I did not endure. I was not able to finish the book, which is in itself, a very rare thing.
In the five years I have been hosting the book club I have never chosen a book that NO ONE liked. There were some that were beloved and some that were despised but they all led to a lively and interactive discussion...until this book. None of the women in my book club liked the book and most didn't even finish it.
I've been harsh in my review, but when I was deciding whether to use this for book club I was swayed by the positive reviews that promised beautiful writing and an engaging storyline. I felt a little mislead so I submit this counterpoint to those reviews.
If there are other book clubs out there looking for interesting reads, I will submit this final thought. In order to have an engaging discussion regarding a piece of literature, the book must be one that people actually WANT to finish.
Happy reading!
July 28, 2014
I couldn't finish this book which is very rare for me. It reminded me of Henry James' The Ambassadors which I read in college and hated. Like that book, the dialog was often obscure, seemingly deliberately confusing and odd (I've never heard anyone talk like these characters).
April 21, 2017
I admit it was a struggle to get through this book. A large part of that, I suppose, is I'm not Jewish and yet the Jewish religion is a big part of the plot of this book. But there are other reasons it was difficult for me to read it. First, it's 694 pages long. I'm OK with long books. I've read Michener and Robert Caro and other writers who produce books of considerable length, but this writer, acclaimed as she is, needed a strong editor for her tome. The story could have been told in half the space. The characters speak in a dialogue that's often difficult to understand, only because people - even academics - don't speak the way these characters talk. I picked up this book because it received decent reviews from critics, but this is the worst rating I've given any book so far. If you are Jewish, it may be a fantastic book to describe today's experience. For me, I'm just glad I finished it. It took me months to complete.
July 5, 2015
Yes, this book can be a bit difficult to follow, but it is beautifully written and deals unabashedly with what it is to be a Jew today. THe protagonist is the Jewish matriarch of a family. An anthropologist, she sees her own clan as an insider and observer. Her family and the characters of the book, are the products of her interfaith marriage and her secular view of the world. Exploring what it is to be a Jew in the modern world is Calisher's is the unabashed reason d'etre of the book. I found the characters complex and engaging.
September 22, 2011
I wasn't enthralled reading it. Just wanted to get to the end which was anticlimatic. It seemed to be a jumble of thoughts and I wasn't sure what the point was. Noticed quite a few typos as well.
November 22, 2021
I decided not to finish this book. Though it had interesting parts, it was hard to keep going, especially as the female lead character took her husband, whose dementia was growing to Europe, to hide the dementia from the family.
June 23, 2019
Confusing and difficult to follow. At almost 700 pages, way too long.
August 1, 2019
Ugh! I can’t get into this. I hate her writing style. Brought it with me on a beach vacation thinking it was going to be a good long read, but I regret that! I just can’t do it!
December 2, 2019
At the half-way point:
This is a book that I suspect most people would give up on within 30 pages. I know I have been tempted. But in between reading other books I come back to it. It has an omniscient narrator sharing a stream of consciousness of several characters in turn. Many references, actually meditations, of what is Jewish leavened with a little bit of what is Roman Catholic and what is American. Plus, a knowledge of upper-middle class intellectual Manhattan is also helpful. But while I have knowledge of all three due to being raised RC, married to RF and growing up in New Jersey reading the New York Time in the 70s and 80s, there is plenty in this book I just don't fathom.
This is a book that I suspect most people would give up on within 30 pages. I know I have been tempted. But in between reading other books I come back to it. It has an omniscient narrator sharing a stream of consciousness of several characters in turn. Many references, actually meditations, of what is Jewish leavened with a little bit of what is Roman Catholic and what is American. Plus, a knowledge of upper-middle class intellectual Manhattan is also helpful. But while I have knowledge of all three due to being raised RC, married to RF and growing up in New Jersey reading the New York Time in the 70s and 80s, there is plenty in this book I just don't fathom.
April 30, 2009
Read about half of this book and did not finish. The story of a big
family that gets very sad. The mother of adult children doesn't want
her children to watch their father deteriorate from altzheimers, so she
travels with him so that his demise is half-way around the globe and
in private.
family that gets very sad. The mother of adult children doesn't want
her children to watch their father deteriorate from altzheimers, so she
travels with him so that his demise is half-way around the globe and
in private.
February 16, 2009
It felt like a struggle to keep and finish reading this. I didn't enjoy the tone or the style.
February 5, 2009
very hard to get into story and even harder to follow. Never warmed to characters or plot
September 17, 2012
The story is very difficult to follow and I could not get into it.
September 6, 2008
hard to work through. I made it though.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews