Helpful Score: 3
The author writes in the tongue of the people he is letting us look at. The turn of the century time when we are lead to believe of a easier by gone time, however, not in this telling. Reading this book was like watching a train wreck so horrible that you could not stand to see it but were unable to turn away. I became emotionally entwined with the young boy, hated his father, all the emotions a good read should bring out.
Helpful Score: 2
i found this novel to be difficult to get into, and i would skip entire passages because of the way they were written. parts of it are written to imitate what's going on in the mind of a young boy, but i do not remember my mind every doing anything of the sort when i was that age. the story, itself, is interesting, which is how i made it to the end. there are definite twists and turns, but i did not care for the manner in which the author wrote the story.
Helpful Score: 1
I loved this book, it is so much more than it's description on the back. This is the definitive immigrant story, it's educational with its empathy for it's characters and its poetry! If you ever wanted to know about the evolution of accents and language, as I did, this the book for you. just deciphering the street vernacular is a real kick!
Helpful Score: 1
This was an interesting and rather sad story about a family struggling with many problems and issues, that could apply to many families, not only immigrants. It was often difficult to read because of the dialect (English pronunciations, not Yiddish) which the author captured, but made reading slow. The book was too long.
One of the few truly great American novels. A classic of psychological fiction.
I had to read this for a college course. Although it is full of interesting details of the immigrant experience, it can be very slow. I don't think I finished it.
Excellent writing and a very moving story. The story of three years in the life of a sensitive Jewish child growing up in extreme poverty. Its paperback edition, published by Avon, sold over a million copies. The novel was included on TIME magazine's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. "Arguably the most distinguished work of fiction ever written about immigrant life...Surely the most lyrically authentic novel in American literature about a young boy's coming to consciousness "---Lis Harris, The New Yorker
