THERE IS A REASON WHY STAR DELI IS ONE OF THE BEST CARRY OUT ONLY RESTAURANTS IN AMERICA! On The Bookshelf OUR HOMEMADE FAT-FREE TUNA ALSO CANT'T BE BEAT! EVERYBODY KNOWS WE HAVE THE BEST HOMEMADE TUNA IN TOWN! TRY OUR DELICIOUS HOMEMADE POTATO SALAD In "Kaaterskill Falls," Allegra Goodman - details the inner world of an Orthodox community. OPEN 7 DAYS M-S111. 7 AM TO 9:30 P SUN. 7 AM TO 11 PM (Reg. & Fal-Free) AND COLE SLAW SAN D EE BRAWARSKY Special to The Jewish News OUR TRAYS CAN'T BE BEAT FOR QUALITY & PRICE! $5.75 per $10.50 per AA person person ON OUR BEAUTIFUL AHEAD Y 1,511-PHICED MEAT OR DAIRY TRAYS WITH THIS COUPON • Not Good Holidays • 10 Person Minimum 24555 W. 12 MILE Just west of Tele • ra h • Southfield !MI =IN MIN MINI ■ 11 Nom Nom Nom NI= 'Fe Asti c tee a , 49 a Szechuan • Hunan Cuisine tccii.e.4..;640s. r 0% OF Excludes Holidays L • Expires 9 30 98 - - 14- TOTAL DINNER I BILL DINE 111 OR CARR•111 Cocktails Beer & Wine Healthy Diet Dishes Available I COMPLETE CATERING SERVICE FOR ALL OCCASIONS I L 29875 NORTHWESTERN HWY. At Inkster • Applegate Square • 3S3-7890 Former Location: 58 Dixie Highway • Waterford Calling A Paktg Geeto ..J out THE JEWISH NEWS CELEBRATION CONNECTION DIRECTORY check 8/28 1998 92 Detroit Jewish News In The Market Place For Your Entertaining Needs! 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