Cynthia FreemanReseñas

Tudo começa com sua chegada a Nova York, vinda do interior, uma ingênua moça de 19 anos, aterrorizada com o gigantismo da cidade, totalmente insegura pelo pouco conhecimento que tinha de si própria e de suas origens. A história continua com o casamento e a maturidade, posteriormente com a inconsolável separação e o divórcio, e chega ao ponto máximo quando, já na casa dos 40, ela vem conhecer um homem que provoca uma mudança em sua vida, fazendo-a sentir não somente todo o legado de sua raça, como também oferecendo-lhe uma oportunidade para se realizar de maneira plena como mulher.

Tudo começa com sua chegada a Nova York, vinda do interior, uma ingênua moça de 19 anos, aterrorizada com o gigantismo da cidade, totalmente insegura pelo pouco conhecimento que tinha de si própria e de suas origens. A história continua com o casamento e a maturidade, posteriormente com a inconsolável separação e o divórcio, e chega ao ponto máximo quando, já na casa dos 40, ela vem conhecer um homem que provoca uma mudança em sua vida, fazendo-a sentir não somente todo o legado de sua raça, como também oferecendo-lhe uma oportunidade para se realizar de maneira plena como mulher.

Conflitos de interesses e traição dão o tom a este romance. A autora apresenta a saga de uma família de advogados importante em Londres durante o período entre as duas guerras mundiais.

“Os personagens são extremamente complexos com sentimentos reais, o livro se passa entre duas guerras e a ficção se mistura com a realidade, nos levando a um final surpreendente”

This saga of New York City, Chicago and San Francisco in the 1930's, 40's and 50's, of Jewish identity, prejudice and the cost of living a lie at the expense of your character is a real page turner, one that's tough to put down, and will make you sad, angry, empathetic and compassionate all at the same time.

You'll feel sorry for David Rezinetsky/Reid, even when you want to throttle him. Both tough and vulnerable, he lets his ambition get the better of him and makes a life choice without figuring the long term, which will later be felt by his wife, Katie and their son, Mark. Even when he has his own doubts, he feels compelled to stick to his deception, despite the cost.

The novel shows the passage of time through the changes in personality, as David loses the balance he had in keeping his ambitions from taking over his better self, while his love and desire go from down to earth Katie to sophisticated socialite Maggie Kent. Katie, meanwhile, changes from adoring wife to betrayed one, and in the process develops a stronger character and more forceful personality, as she refuses to be anyone's fool.

Meanwhile, their son Mark grows from a boy desperate for his father's time and attention to a young man who makes some discoveries about the past that affect his future and jeopardize his already precarious relationship with David.

There are minor characters that add to the story, like Chaim, Adrienne and Jim Fowler, each important in their own way.

My only complaint Maggie's marriage to Peter, which, considering her strong, independent character, I find implausible. Aside from that, this book is a great one, and shouldn't be passed up.

Written about it in 1982: "Okay. Story of one woman's effort to do all for her Jewish, fled from Russia, family"

This was the first Cynthia Freeman book I read, and because I enjoyed it so much I looked forward to reading the rest. What a disappointment, as I never cared for any of them, couldn't even read them the whole way through. (I've wondered if she really wrote those others, or did some less talented author steal her identity?)

But enough of that. This book probably reflected the lives of real people, who felt they had to deny their heritage in order to succeed in what's supposed to be a country of equal opportunity. (Excuse me while I choke.) American hypocrisy at its best. David Rezinetsky becomes David Reid, escapes his Jewish past,(and the prejudice that goes with it) and becomes more successful than he ever dreamed, but pays a price for it. His wife, Katie, also pays, for going along with what she knew in her heart was wrong. She was in love and wanted to be a good wife and be a part of her husband's dream, but when she can't share that dream, where does that leave her?

David and Katie were a mismatch from the start. She was lonely, he was restless and dissatisfied, they were drawn together but didn't belong together. A HEA was not in the cards.

Neither was David's relationship with Maggie Kent destined to work. To be honest, I don't know what he saw in her, she was a self involved socialite, who seemed to think she was God's gift, strung nice guy Peter along, knowing that he loved her, because he was convenient to date and sleep with, dumped him to start an affair with David, knowing he was married and had a son and - even worse - he was a client of hers (she was a decorator, working on his house),which today would be seen as unethical behavior. She boo hoos over her lack of a social life when she and David can't be seen as a couple in public, and, despite her claims about being independent, when things start coming apart she elopes with Peter, who was such a beta he actually still loved her, didn't even move on with his life all the time she was with David. (She made a hypocritical speech about how marriage where one partner was in love and the other wasn't wouldn't work for her, then she goes and gets herself in that situation. Talk about pathetic.)

Katie disappointed me as well. No one could fault her for trying to make her marriage work, but there came a time when she should have realized how hopeless it was, long before she found out about Maggie. When she did, she should have confronted David with the truth, gotten a divorce (and with a good lawyer ended up a rich divorcee) and found herself a man who could really love her. Instead, she keeps quiet, bides her time, and then gets back at David by refusing to divorce him. She gained nothing from that, except to make things tougher for her son, Mark, who got caught up in all the lies, deceptions, and unhappiness. Because David no longer wanted to be Jewish, and Katie didn't want to become Christian, they had no religion at all, and Mark felt the loss of it, as that's so often a part of identity.

Ironically, one of the things that bothered David the most was that he never felt his father really cared for him, he never seemed to have time to listen or really get to know him, and then he went and repeated that pattern with Mark.

When David has moments of guilt for the decision he made (which included turning his back on his family after his father disowned him), especially when confronted with people who stayed true to their Jewish heritage and still became successful, it makes him bitter and angry, and turns him into one of the bigots he sought to escape from. He goes so far as to order Mark to end a friendship when he finds out the boy's Jewish, and later on completely loses it when Mark falls in love with a young Jewish woman.

Who knows what would have happened if David hadn't overheard those anti-semitic remarks when he went for that job interview, if his father had been more understanding instead of quoting the Torah, if the rest of his family had the guts to stand up to his father.....he may have stayed Jewish and been a much happier person.

Family saga, set in England and France in the era between world wars; centering on a Rumanian-Jewish cabaret singer who marries a young Englishman, and her daughter, who marries one man while loving another.

Not quite as soapy as it sounds, but close. The villain of the piece is interestingly drawn.

Freeman brilliantly uses a single family to give the reader a complete picture of what was happening in the world to all the Jews. It primarily focuses on the life and points of view of Chavala and Dovid.
Chavala is the eldest sister of four sisters and a brother. She feels a responsibility for the whole family, which is understandable, given the events of the first chapter. Dovid, on the other hand, feels his greatest responsibility is to Israel and doing everything in his power to attempt to convince any empire to create the State of Israel. Though Dovid himself is fictional, I'm sure that the creation of Israel is due to real men out there who had the dedication and determination of this character. Overall, I loved the book. Each of the five sisters were different and they had their problems. Like sisters do. They also had problems within their families that they sometimes shared and sometimes didn't with each other. No one went completely unscathed by life, which is realistic. The one brother also had good and bad times. Each of the siblings start with opinions and ideas of the world that change and grow as circumstances and conflict destroy those ideas. Each goes through life changing events and are realistically changed.It also didn't end with too neat a bow, but was still a happy ending.
The book covers a lot of time and a lot of places. The way that Freeman manages to cover all of this is just amazing. She depends on the reader to know of the more popularized world events such as the Holocaust and the Great Depression, so she doesn't do much more than refer to them as things that are going on.  Then she tells you where everyone sits with this events, bringing them in but not feeling the need to get into how they went down. The how isn't as important as recognizing that these events shaped the characters and that most people know exactly what has happening during these times. The Holocaust was mostly covered from the point of view of Israel as a set of settlements in Palestine yearning to be a state which I had never seen before. It wasn't even until recently that I had been made aware that there had been Jews living in Israel/Palestine prior to WWII. I get how ridiculous it sounds, but I just didn't get that part in high school history class. I originally got it from another book.

weak book Lily - saga

Lily had beauty, fortune and a wealthy fiance. Yet on the night of her wedding she threw it all away...for the love of another man.
Harry Kohle was everything her parents despised- with nothing to offer but a driving ambition to write. And his undivided passion-at least for a while...
From the high society of New York's Upper East Side to the corrupting glamour of Hollywood and the haunting beauty of the Israeli desert; through hardship, tragedy and the fruits of fabulous wealth-their hearts were challenged by the ultimate test...

typical her type book

A youthful marriage frees Ann Pollock from an unhappy home life. While her mother-in-law doesn't initially welcome the shop girl her son loves, the thrifty bride soon proves her worth by supporting her in-laws after Phillip Coulter volunteers to serve in World War II. Crushed by the tortures of a Japanese prison camp, Phillip returns to civilian life to find his once-proud mother incapacitated by a stroke and his dreams of a bright future reduced to an ill-paying job as a law clerk. The birth of a daughter, Eva, brings joy to the Coulters, but as money worries mount, Ann takes a job in a real estate office despite her husband's objections. With each successful deal, the marriage becomes more hollow, and Ann is devastated when Phillip deserts her. Though a new love assuages her pain, that relationship disintegrates after a botched abortion leaves Eva sterile. The Coulters then reunite, and just when things start to work out, Phillip suffers a stroke, followed by Alzheimer's disease.

Janet - journey of discovery? husband Bill McNeil - to Alan Blum old age at '47

*Pg 361
"Between the cradle and the grave people here allowed the illusion of leading their own lives, but in the end all His"
-was a power beyond them, made them real

In her latest bestseller, Cynthia Freeman delineates the insightful and moving story of Janet Stevens. As a native teenager from Kansas she comes to New York in search of fame and fortune. The pursuit of her dream leads her into marriage, motherhood, a heart-rending seperation and then divorce. At the age of forty five, she meets a man who not only gives her a renewed sense of her Jewish heritage, but also offers her the chance for total fulfillment as a woman.

This took a long time for me to read--a little over three weeks, and I'm usually a quick reader. But it was VERY involved--great character development! I really enjoyed it!!!

Amazon Description:
Nineteen-year-old Janet Stevens leaves Wichita, Kansas, for New York—and a glamorous career as a model. Manhattan in the 1950s is a heady place for a sheltered Midwesterner. A new friend helps her discover her forefathers’ faith, but from the moment she sees Bill McNeil at a party, Janet senses she’s found her future. When they marry, she believes she’s finally gotten what she always wanted—not fame or fortune, but the love that will fulfill and sustain her as nothing else ever could.

From the passionate throes of youth to the stings and shocks of middle age, Come Pour the Wine draws a brilliant portrait of a marriage and a family in search of its roots, written with Cynthia Freeman’s trademark insight and compassion.

Opinions:
Come Pour the Wine is a romance novel that follows Janet through her new life in New York and how she finds love. The story is told in third in person through a few characters, but mainly Janet. When the story begins (in the 1950s), Janet is a young girl who leaves her family in Kansas to pursue a modeling career in New York. With a rough start, Janet soon finds some friends and connections to home. Not long after, she meets Bill through a mutual friend, and falls head over heels in love. However, love is not an easy road for Janet and Bill. The book spans about 20 years of Janet’s life in New York.

This story was not one that I’d normally pick up. [I usually like romance novels that have something else going on besides normal life events – if that makes sense.] The era 1950s-1970s was fairly new for me, although I read stories set in that time period. I never read a book with subtle Jewish connections to it. [On a side note: I have seen the TV show The Nanny, and it was neat to see how to spell some of those Jewish sayings. Obviously, I’m not Jewish!] The writing read smoothly—although I didn’t care for the jumps in character perspectives without warning. It would make me pause a moment while reading to put myself in the other character’s mind. I don’t mind having different views, but I would have been easier if there were distinct breaks to separate them.

Despite the jumps, the different perspectives helped the reader to understand what the other characters were thinking – adding more depth to the story. I never really saw what Janet saw in Bill. But, perhaps that was just me. Kit was an interesting character and one of my favorites. I thought she brought a little oomph to the story. The plot itself tied in themes about family/marriage, Jewish and religious connections, finding oneself, and love. It told a story about the normal challenges couple might face. The book was a fairly quick read and overall I liked it.

Illusions of Love by Cynthia Freeman
Leaving France after the war he made his way to USA and then to Panama to get to the west. Although sick someone helped him and he continued his journey. struck it rich in CA and staked others money so they could dig for gold. His parents had died and now the rest of the family wanted to stay in Jerusalem and not to the USA. He felt there was nothing worth living for. He was introduced to Sarah and married her.
Martin has met Jenny again after 25 years and now he's not going to let anybody
stand in their way. Before it was religion and he gave in and married whom his parents
wanted him to.
Silvia-who his parents picked for Martin
Martin never feels like he's earned being the head of they dynasty so he leaves CA for NY to head up his college roommates firm.
Martin and Jenny make decisions that makes them happy til after his father is taken ill and Martin flies back to CA.

Sweeping from lavish San Francisco mansions to the devastated villages of war-torn Italy to the swank clubs and glittering thoroughfares of postwar Manhattan to today, Illusions of Love is the unforgettable story of a romantic triangle that spans a quarter of a century.