Allison W. (sealady) reviewed on 1/13/2007 + 657 more book reviews

From Library Journal: "In Jong's newest work, four generations of talented, beautiful Jewish women: Sarah, Salome, Sally, and Sara, fill ten decades with tragic, action-packed lives shaped by the challenges of Jewish history and the misery created by the deeply flawed men they choose. In the early 1900s, Sarah flees a deadly pogrom in Russia and paints her way to fame and fortune in America. Sarah's daughter, Salome, sleeps and writes her way through literary Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Salome's daughter, Sally, a tormented product of the Sixties, drowns her soul in a numbing mess of drugs, men, and alcohol while skyrocketing to the top of the music charts. In the new millennium, Sally's child, Sara, with her own daughter in tow, leaves a failing marriage and spurns the love of the only wholly decent man in this tale to unravel the secrets of Judaism and feminism that molded her famous relatives. Jong is a gifted writer who tells a captivating story, but one does have to question her reluctance to part with her now-tired insistence on peppering her novels with scenes of gratuitous vulgarity. It worked in Fear of Flying, but nearly a quarter of a century later, it would have been nice to be able to recommend this title to a broader audience." Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., Mich. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --

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