What do you think?
Rate this book
Breakfast with the Ones You Love: A Novel
Meet Lea Tillim, aka Cadaver Dimples, Star of Morgues and Emergency Rooms. Scarecrow thin, with a sharp crew cut and a dead face, Lea’s a girl with a talent. She can think you into a heart attack if you cross her—or, if she’s feeling kind, just a bad case of indigestion. She has only one friend in the world, her cat, Tule. You see, a girl like Lea can’t be too careful whom she shows her talent to. In her experience it only leads to troubles and tragedies.
Now it’s led her to Jack Konar, who’s secretly building something strange and wonderful in an abandoned section of the local Sears and Roebuck. According to Jack, it’s all part of a master plan to rescue the Chosen from this godforsaken planet. But the agents of the Evil Ones–cleverly disguised as ordinary people and sometimes even cats–are trying to stop him. Jack needs a girl with Lea’s special talents. It would all sound just too crazy for words if the most dangerous and unexpected thing of all hadn’t happened. After years of the best poker face grief could buy, Lea finds herself slowly coming back to life . . . and falling in love with the savior of the world.
Now it’s led her to Jack Konar, who’s secretly building something strange and wonderful in an abandoned section of the local Sears and Roebuck. According to Jack, it’s all part of a master plan to rescue the Chosen from this godforsaken planet. But the agents of the Evil Ones–cleverly disguised as ordinary people and sometimes even cats–are trying to stop him. Jack needs a girl with Lea’s special talents. It would all sound just too crazy for words if the most dangerous and unexpected thing of all hadn’t happened. After years of the best poker face grief could buy, Lea finds herself slowly coming back to life . . . and falling in love with the savior of the world.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 3, 2013
I love Eliot Fintushel's short stories, enough that I've searched for and read them on the web. And here's this whole novel, with high praise in the front pages from prominent writers that I also like! So, I was expecting spectacular and hilarious. But what I got was more like engaging and amusing.
Fintushel is a great storyteller. The characters, the situation, the plot turns, are all excellent. In the front matter, Jack Dann says the book reads like a collaboration of, among others, P.G. Wodehouse (on speed), Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Harlan Ellison. I would add Damon Runyon. There are gangsters, there are Jews, there are unlikely Satanists, and they all come together in a deliciously wacky way. I enjoyed the Jewish characters and their Yiddish-inflected dialogue and the twisted ideas about the Chosen ones and about the Messiah as a spaceship.
So what's not to like? Lea is a good main character, just 16 and emotionally closed off because she's killed people with her terrible talent and can do it again. A few things bother me about her. It's a stretch but not unbelievable how fast she comes back alive when she falls for Jack. But the way she adapts so quickly to tons of makeup and stylish clothes, notices that she's beautiful, and uses her sex appeal to manipulate men...just kind of jars me. Maybe some teenage girls are that self confident (none that I knew/know), but not when just coming out of an outcast phase. And there are a few loose ends. What did happen to her father? How did she end up on her own at 16? And what about the cat? I kept thinking the cat was a player--Lea's conscience, or maybe with her own agenda?-- but she kind of fades out of the story before the big event. Also, is there a time frame? Seems to me it's in the 1980s, because there's a phone booth and a typewriter and a living mother of someone killed in WW2. And 19-year old Jack's parents survived concentration camps.
A novel has more depth than a short story, and this is Fintushel's first. He's already a master at the short form. With my quibbles, I devoured this novel whole, quickly, and with gusto. I hope he does it again.
Fintushel is a great storyteller. The characters, the situation, the plot turns, are all excellent. In the front matter, Jack Dann says the book reads like a collaboration of, among others, P.G. Wodehouse (on speed), Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Harlan Ellison. I would add Damon Runyon. There are gangsters, there are Jews, there are unlikely Satanists, and they all come together in a deliciously wacky way. I enjoyed the Jewish characters and their Yiddish-inflected dialogue and the twisted ideas about the Chosen ones and about the Messiah as a spaceship.
So what's not to like? Lea is a good main character, just 16 and emotionally closed off because she's killed people with her terrible talent and can do it again. A few things bother me about her. It's a stretch but not unbelievable how fast she comes back alive when she falls for Jack. But the way she adapts so quickly to tons of makeup and stylish clothes, notices that she's beautiful, and uses her sex appeal to manipulate men...just kind of jars me. Maybe some teenage girls are that self confident (none that I knew/know), but not when just coming out of an outcast phase. And there are a few loose ends. What did happen to her father? How did she end up on her own at 16? And what about the cat? I kept thinking the cat was a player--Lea's conscience, or maybe with her own agenda?-- but she kind of fades out of the story before the big event. Also, is there a time frame? Seems to me it's in the 1980s, because there's a phone booth and a typewriter and a living mother of someone killed in WW2. And 19-year old Jack's parents survived concentration camps.
A novel has more depth than a short story, and this is Fintushel's first. He's already a master at the short form. With my quibbles, I devoured this novel whole, quickly, and with gusto. I hope he does it again.
May 17, 2008
Your basic Jewish chick-lit apocalypse. The one where Lea, a teenage runaway who can kill people with her mind, takes up with Jack (a.k.a. the Yid), who's building a spaceship in a walled-off section of Sears Roebuck to rescue the Chosen of the Chosen.
I liked the voice, and I believed in the characters, and the plot and minor characters are delightfully wacky. But I still had serious technical problems with the book. For one thing, it starts too far into the story; Lea already has a relationship with Jack, to the point where she calls it our spaceship, so I don't get what spurs her to start her great thaw. Second, the plot repeatedly hinges on her not asking crucial questions or sharing crucial information or bothering to read notes left for her, and the in-story reasons are never very convincing.
I also kept waiting for an ethical explanation: how was it OK for Jack to ask Lea to kill for him? This is never addressed in a way that works for me. And I never ceased to find it jarring when in the middle of some really important thing Lea would be thinking about kissing, or growing her hair out.
A lot of things are treated as mysteries when they're really quite obvious: I knew who the Bull was going to be the instant another character mentioned him, and I knew what was going to happen to Sylvia and what had already happened to Tule.
The voice and the originality carried me through to the end, and I'd probably give another book by the same author a try, but only with great caution.
I liked the voice, and I believed in the characters, and the plot and minor characters are delightfully wacky. But I still had serious technical problems with the book. For one thing, it starts too far into the story; Lea already has a relationship with Jack, to the point where she calls it our spaceship, so I don't get what spurs her to start her great thaw. Second, the plot repeatedly hinges on her not asking crucial questions or sharing crucial information or bothering to read notes left for her, and the in-story reasons are never very convincing.
I also kept waiting for an ethical explanation: how was it OK for Jack to ask Lea to kill for him? This is never addressed in a way that works for me. And I never ceased to find it jarring when in the middle of some really important thing Lea would be thinking about kissing, or growing her hair out.
A lot of things are treated as mysteries when they're really quite obvious: I knew who the Bull was going to be the instant another character mentioned him, and I knew what was going to happen to Sylvia and what had already happened to Tule.
The voice and the originality carried me through to the end, and I'd probably give another book by the same author a try, but only with great caution.
April 9, 2015
This is the first Jewish themed science-fiction I've read. It's an interesting story but as a religious Jew, I don't know what to make of it.
Mostly, I appreciate that it is clean. There is no gratuitous sex and the language is mild. The story is compelling. I want to know what's going to happen next. The ending, while predictable, was treated in a creative manner. The story revolves around a plucky young female protagonist, cartoonish in the way that these characters usually are.
To give some verisimilitude,Yiddish words are sprinkled throughout. G-d is referred to as the Tetragrammaton. Characters have Jewish names. A messianic theme runs throughout the story.
It's the Jewish stuff that puts me on edge a bit. I'm always uncomfortable when I see depictions of Jews on shows and movies doing things like wearing a tallis and praying. In the same manner, this book leaves me feeling uncomfortable, like the characters are misusing Jewish rituals. There is a group of Jews called "the minyan" who are giving the priestly blessings that only the priestly class, Kohanim, can administer. Members of "the minyan" wield shofars, rams horns, that are traditionally blown on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and according to sources, will herald the coming of the Messiah.
So, while it was a good story, I'm not likely to reread it. There aren't enough hard science-fiction aspects in it to keep me coming back. It's a well written piece, however, and I certainly will look up some more of this author's work.
Mostly, I appreciate that it is clean. There is no gratuitous sex and the language is mild. The story is compelling. I want to know what's going to happen next. The ending, while predictable, was treated in a creative manner. The story revolves around a plucky young female protagonist, cartoonish in the way that these characters usually are.
To give some verisimilitude,Yiddish words are sprinkled throughout. G-d is referred to as the Tetragrammaton. Characters have Jewish names. A messianic theme runs throughout the story.
It's the Jewish stuff that puts me on edge a bit. I'm always uncomfortable when I see depictions of Jews on shows and movies doing things like wearing a tallis and praying. In the same manner, this book leaves me feeling uncomfortable, like the characters are misusing Jewish rituals. There is a group of Jews called "the minyan" who are giving the priestly blessings that only the priestly class, Kohanim, can administer. Members of "the minyan" wield shofars, rams horns, that are traditionally blown on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and according to sources, will herald the coming of the Messiah.
So, while it was a good story, I'm not likely to reread it. There aren't enough hard science-fiction aspects in it to keep me coming back. It's a well written piece, however, and I certainly will look up some more of this author's work.
November 16, 2008
A wild ride - a hard-edged but oddly innocent urban fantasy that treats Judaism the way Christopher Moore does Christianity in novels like his Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal or A Dirty Job, or the way Minister Faust treats blackitude (is that even a word? If not, it should be) in Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad - that is, affectionately, literally and literately, as source material for some damned good fiction.
Fintushel's writing is most like a Paul Zindel novel, though, if you remember those - Pardon Me, You're Stepping on My Eyeball! or My Darling, My Hamburger - the sort of short, zesty books in which a plucky young heroine hides her feelings to avoid getting hurt (again), but learns the cost of doing so from an unlikely source.
A most unlikely source, indeed, in this case: Jack, "The Yid" - mysterious point man for a literal Cabal of Jewish mystics, whose main interest is in opening the way for the space ship Meshiach to come to Earth, where it will evacuate the Thrice-Chosen... of whom, of course, Jack is the ringleader. And Lea Tillim, even though she's a goy and a shikseh to boot, just might get to come along for the ride...
Fintushel's writing is most like a Paul Zindel novel, though, if you remember those - Pardon Me, You're Stepping on My Eyeball! or My Darling, My Hamburger - the sort of short, zesty books in which a plucky young heroine hides her feelings to avoid getting hurt (again), but learns the cost of doing so from an unlikely source.
A most unlikely source, indeed, in this case: Jack, "The Yid" - mysterious point man for a literal Cabal of Jewish mystics, whose main interest is in opening the way for the space ship Meshiach to come to Earth, where it will evacuate the Thrice-Chosen... of whom, of course, Jack is the ringleader. And Lea Tillim, even though she's a goy and a shikseh to boot, just might get to come along for the ride...
July 6, 2009
I picked this one up in the sci-fi section of a used bookstore, but I'm not sure that's where it belongs. Rather, I'd classify it as "too loopy for mainstream." Its narrator is one Lea Tillim, who has a voice and cadence not unlike Jack Kerouac, if Kerouac had been a tough-as-nails 16-year-old girl living on the street who'd developed the ability to deaden her face and kill people with her brain. Yeah, it's that kind of book.
Lea's sorry life takes a turn for the better when she hooks up with Jack Konar, a "Yid" who's turning a disused room in the back of a Sears into a spaceship that's going to fly him and the other Chosen Ones to meet God in the Garden of Eden, Ish-Ra-El. He's clearly crazy as a loon, until Lea starts to believe that maybe, just maybe, he's not. Jack needs her to protect him from the Evil One (whose agents are everywhere, of course) while he finishes painting the inside of his ship and gathering the Chosen Ones for paradise.
"Breakfast" takes as its premise what can only be described as a classic scizophrenic paranoid delusion, and says "what if it's true?" It's a neat spin, and it's surprising how uplifting the book becomes. After all, who doesn't like an Apocalypse with a happy ending?
Lea's sorry life takes a turn for the better when she hooks up with Jack Konar, a "Yid" who's turning a disused room in the back of a Sears into a spaceship that's going to fly him and the other Chosen Ones to meet God in the Garden of Eden, Ish-Ra-El. He's clearly crazy as a loon, until Lea starts to believe that maybe, just maybe, he's not. Jack needs her to protect him from the Evil One (whose agents are everywhere, of course) while he finishes painting the inside of his ship and gathering the Chosen Ones for paradise.
"Breakfast" takes as its premise what can only be described as a classic scizophrenic paranoid delusion, and says "what if it's true?" It's a neat spin, and it's surprising how uplifting the book becomes. After all, who doesn't like an Apocalypse with a happy ending?
September 16, 2008
There are an awful lot of books that deal with the end of the world, and almost all of them employ Christian mythology if they want to include a bit of spirituality. So it’s really cool to read an End of Days book that instead involves the Jewish faith. This book also has a really interesting heroine going for it: Lea can kill people with her brain, and she’s tried to make her emotions just as dead. First person narration has been bugging me lately, but I really liked her voice; it kept this book going when the narrative got bogged down.
And it did get bogged down. A lot of what happens feels needlessly complicated; there are a lot of scenes of old Jewish guys sitting around arguing, which on the one hand made me go, “Hee! It’s my relatives arguing!” but which on the other hand made me go, “Oy. It’s my relatives. Arguing.” I really appreciated the ways in which Fintushel strived to make this book different—the end result is one of the most original things I’ve read in a while. So I respected it, but I didn’t love it. Still, worth trying if you want to sample something out of the ordinary.
And it did get bogged down. A lot of what happens feels needlessly complicated; there are a lot of scenes of old Jewish guys sitting around arguing, which on the one hand made me go, “Hee! It’s my relatives arguing!” but which on the other hand made me go, “Oy. It’s my relatives. Arguing.” I really appreciated the ways in which Fintushel strived to make this book different—the end result is one of the most original things I’ve read in a while. So I respected it, but I didn’t love it. Still, worth trying if you want to sample something out of the ordinary.
February 15, 2008
It took almost 100 pages to get into this rather bizarre novel. It was well worth it. The quirky characters, twisting plot lines, and exposition of the nature of family are delightful and convey more serious thought than one would suspect. I am reminded of some of Christopher Moore's better writing.
July 6, 2008
OK, ignore the book cover, it really doesn't do the book justice. The story starts off unbelievable, but the main character is also unbelieving, so it works. So the story moves with a mostly-rational sense of logic by the main character that you can't help but go along with. It's a surprisingly good story, lots of interesting characters.
August 1, 2011
I picked this up at a free book box and was completely blown away by the lyrical little gem of a novel that combines fantasy, sci-fi, kabbalah, adventure, drugs, romance, and a hefty sprinkling of Jewish cultural references. Lots of fun to read.
March 10, 2013
Very strange book! Hard to classify. But I liked the voice of the narrator. Possibly someone with a background in Judaism would understand some references better than I did, but it was all fascinatingly creepy.
May 23, 2008
Rollicking good fun with ecstatic breakneck plotting and prose. I adore Fintushel's short fiction and was delighted to read him at novel length.
July 24, 2008
Warped but still interesting. One of those books where you read it and have no idea why you're reading it but at the end you go 'hmm' interesting.
January 7, 2009
The Second Coming, Jewish style, rendered as science/teen fiction. Didn't quite hate it. But sort of did.
Comparisons to P.G. Wodehouse are way, way off. Criminal, even.
Comparisons to P.G. Wodehouse are way, way off. Criminal, even.
November 20, 2011
Four walls, a ceiling, and a floor make for a 6-sided cube in which to await τετραγράμματον and maybe enjoy a little breakfast with the Ten, the Thirteen, and/or, maybe with the ones you love.
June 6, 2013
The book was entertaining, but went from fast paced and interesting to slow and tough to get through. It almost felt like there were 2 writers. The ending was disappointing.
April 20, 2008
Couldn't get into it, stopped reading after a couple chapters.
June 4, 2008
My favorite new book: A riot grrl and New York's Jews save the world.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews