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In "Kaaterskill Falls," Allegra Goodman - details the
inner world of an Orthodox community.
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llegra Goodman is perhaps
the only novelist who has
been compared to Jane
usten and Sholem Ale-
ichem. The 31-year old author laughs
when she hears this, and remarks that
both are among her heroes.
Kaaterskill Falls (Dial; $23.95), her
third book, is her first novel, and it is
probably -more Austen then Aleichem.
The first two books were collections of
stories; Total Immersion was published
when she graduated from Harvard, and
the second, The Family Markowitz, was
published in 1996. Last year, Goodman
'received a doctorate in English from
Stanford University.
In this novel, the author's voice is
suite different from her earlier work. "A
writer should have many styles," Good-
man says in an interview from her home
in Cambridge, Mass. "For me, writing is
a bit like being an actor, performing dif-
ferent parts. This book lends itself to a
different mood."
The style is still recognizably Good-
man, with characters drawn with
remarkable insight. In her short stories,
the humor can be laugh-out-loud, while
here it's subtle. In Kaaterskill Falls she
creates a world that envelops the reader.
The setting is a small town in the
Catskills — the summer outpost of the
Orthodox followers of a Ray otherwise
based in Washington Heights, N.Y. —
nearby the awesome falls in the title,
depicted on the jacket in a historic
painting by Thomas Cole.
As Cole captures the natural world in
its drama and spirituality, so too does
Goodman portray the inner landscapes
of her characters and their community.
The novel's unseen narrator has a clear
view into the characters' souls, many of
whom grapple with issues of religious
commitment and observance, personal
freedom, their pasts.
- The Kirshners (the followers of Rav
Kirshner) are a group that is non-Cha-
sidic, non-Zionist. One of the most
interesting among them is the British-
Sandee Brawarsky is a New York-
based book critic.
born Elizabeth Shulman, the ?Pother of
five daughters who reads Milton and
Tolstoy, can play badminton and is curi-
ous about the world.
She names her daughters Annette,
Margot, Rowena, Sabrina and Bernice
— although they're called Chani, Malki,
Ruchel, Sorah and Bracha — because
"she wanted something remarkable and
elegant — beyond the usual expectation.
... She named them to have imagina-
tion."
Elizabeth is happily married to Isaac,
yet she yearns to do something different
Allegra Goodman describes her first
novel as a "combination of memory,
experience and imagination,
like all writing."
with her life. After gazing for the first
time at the Cole painting of the falls she
has often visited, she finds her own
vision and sets out "to do something of
her own." Her idea, for which she gains
the Ray's approval, is to open a kosher
store. But her success is short-lived.
While Elizabeth feels confined by the
laws the community upholds, her hus-
band Isaac and others find freedom in
the same set of restrictions.
The Ray, born in Germany and edu-
cated in philosophy, literature and music
as well as religious studies, is guiding his
followers into a life of greater con-
straints. Yet he is dismayed at the
increasing narrow vision of his followers,
including his younger son Isaiah, who is
kind and pious but not interesting.
Jeremy, the Ray's brilliant older son,
lives apart from the community but vis-
its Kaaterskill, wearing "a straw hat with
a jaunty air, as though he were going to
a garden party in a Renoir painting." A
college professor, he "affects a kind of
nonchalance in the way he sits and