Elaine Kalman Naves

With poorly executed characters, little real sense of place for the settings in Montreal- (a city of very different neighborhoods), this novel disappoints. It could have been a fun romp through my neighborhood and other dynamic parts of Montreal, but instead it really could have taken place anywhere. The author "tells" us who her characters are and what they are all about rather than showing us as the characters unfold on the pages. Her descriptions of life in the Synagogue/Temple ring true to my limited experience, but she uses Montreal as a setting without taking advantage of it's rich and complicated reality (Montreal has a rich history with many ethnic communities, a language divide, a food/art/architecture/ political scene that gives it so much depth. The Montreal in this novel feel like a bland suburban tract.

There were so many sub -plots that were unnecessary, unresolved and distracting, they added pages but nothing else to the story. The author is a book critic and it takes guts for such a person to put out a novel- they know that readers are expecting so much from them, after all, they can pull apart the writings of others so they surely must be aware of not making the same mistakes, and yet neither this author, nor her editors caught the lapses and failings of this novel.… (más)