Arts & Entertainment
SUMMER READING
Cover Story
from page 67
NONFICTION
against Rose's career overachievement.
of commercial chicanery, based on
Each sister wants what the other
considerable research. It was set in
has, and their wanting makes it all but
18th-century London and featured a
LOST IN AMERICA: A JOURNEY
impossible for them to connect for
Jewish protagonist.
WITH MY FATHER
more
than
a
few
fractious
weeks
at
a
With this new book, the author has
By Sherwin Nuland
established himself as a successful histor- time — until Maggie commits the
(Knopf; 210 pp.; $24)
ultimate betrayal of sisterhood.
ical novelist with an unusual specialty.
Weiner skillfully throws out gos-
financial hanky-panky in an earlier era.
s a boy and
samer threads — a lovesick 70-year-
Liss' two novels will be unusually
even through
old
here,
a
bereft
grandmother
there
attractive to readers interested in thrillers
his college
—
and
ties
them
all
together
into
one
with mystery, suspense and business.
days, Sherwin Nuland
— Morton I. Teicher great big satisfying package. Even the
would meet his father
evil Stepmonster comes in for some
at the 183rd Street
humanizing.
IN HER SHOES
subway station in the
Relationships reveal themselves, bit
By Jennifer Weiner
Bronx every after-
by
bit,
until
the
web
is
woven
and
the
(Atria Books; 424 pp.; $25)
reader, happily snared, turns page after noon at 5:45 and
help the older man, who had trouble
page to see how Rose and Maggie
eading an
walking,
traverse the few blocks home.
finally make peace.
author's sec-
To
this
day, more than 40 years after
Fans of Good in Bed will be delight-
ond novel can
his
father's
death, as he writes in a new
ed by cameo appearances from Cannie
be risky business. If
Lost
in America, he can still feel
memoir,
and
the
effervescent
Nifkin.
you enjoyed the first,
his father's tight grip on his right arm.
doesn't
end
happily
In
Her
Shoes
you'll likely crack
The father, Meyer Nudelman, didn't
ever after but happy for now. And that
open the second. But
get
many breaks. On his own, he came
is good enough.
will book No. 2 be as
to
New
York from the Bessarabian
Whether your tastes run to Via Spaga
funny? As poignant? Will the charac-
town
of
Novoselitz in 1907.
or Villager, Manolo Blahnik or Olde
ters once again dance off the page and
He never learned much English and
Maine
Trotter,
give
this
book
a
read.
into your heart?
spoke his own vernacular, worked at
Enjoy the blisters and bliss that are get-
Jennifer Weiner's debut novel, Good
many jobs in the garment industry after
ting
to
be
a
Jennifer
Weiner
trademark.
in Bed, was such a book. In Her Shoes
— Debra D. Darvick a candy store he opened failed, wit-
has a lot to live up to. And live it does.
Weiner has the fat-girl-finds-love-
and-happiness theme down as cold as
the pints of Ben & Jerry's New York
Superfudge Chunk her heroines stash
in their freezer for comfort food.
But lest you think Weiner has gone
the way of formulaic success, don't
- the launch of Clinrons hotly selling
JOE BERKOFSKY
think formula; think recipe — a finely
title, Jews and events in the Jewish
Jewhisif ' 4 hic A at
balanced, artfully nuanced recipe that
world play roles big and small in
left this reviewer weeping into her
onica
oon
poolside sugar-free iced tea.
sh footnotes to
Lewinsky scandal erupted,
Weiner dishes up Rose and her
Hillary Rodham Clinton
younger sister, Maggie. Not quite
encountered Elie Wiese' in Davos,
orphans, these girls are nevertheless in
Switzerland.
deep need of maternal care. When
V
Ra
The Nobel laureate embraced the
their mother commits suicide, their
campaign
figure and
first lady and asked, "What is wrong
father remarries a woman they
later
White
House
with Arnerica? Why are they doing
promptly, and aptly, name the
staffer
for
Bill
Clinton.
this?"
Stepmonster.
The former first lady
Clinton said she did not know, and
Sex kitten Maggie, a "D-cup" with
describes how she
Wieset replied that he and his wife,
the words "Born To Be Bad" tattooed
called the campaign's
Marion, were her friends and "want
around her left ankle, exhibits a self-
Little Rock, Ark., head-
to help you."
absorption that would have made
Wiesd's "experience as a Holocaust quarters one day.
Narcissus blush. She is everything her
Rabinowitz, the
survivor has given Elie a kind of
overweight, dateless, attorney sister,
director of design and
genius for empathy. He never flinch-
production for Clinton's first presi-
Rose, is not.
es from anyone else's suffering, and
Rose spends her days trying cases and
dential election, picked up the phone
his heart is big enough to absorb a
her nights trying to figure out her life.
and "for no particular reason, blurted
friend's pain without a second
Maggie couldn't care less if the surd.'
out, `Flillarylandl'"
thought," Clinton writes M her new
come out tomorrow; come sunset she's
"I-1e was embarrassed to hear my
autobiography, Living History (Simon
ready to party, but not before swiping
voice,
but I thought he had come up
& Schuster; 576 pp.; $28), which hit
her sister's Christian Luboutin stilettos.
with a great nickname," Clinton
bookstores with a huge media splash
There is another side to these girls,
writes. "The name stuck."
last week.
and Weiner deftly limns their vulnera-
When he learned he had made it
While the Lewinsky affair may be
bilities. Maggie's dyslexia and chronic
into
Clinton's index, Rabinowitz
dominating the media swirl around
job-hopping stand out in sharp relief
A
R
.
JN
6/20
2003
88
nessed the deaths of several members of
the new family he created here, and
long suffered from a debilitating disease.
At home, he was sometimes quiet, at
other times inexplicably volatile.
The son, who shortened his last
name in high school, is now 72, a dis-
tinguished professor at Yale and for-
mer surgeon who has written noted
books, including How We Die.
In this unusual and powerful mem-
oir, he not only reveals in painful detail
the difficult relationship they shared,
but he describes for the first time his
own bout with severe depression in his
late 30s and early 40s, when he was
hospitalized for more than a year and
given 20 electric shock treatments.
If not for the intervention of a
young resident psychiatrist, his physi-
cians were prepared to do a lobotomy.
In his illness, Nuland took on the
stooped, unsteady gait of his father.
But throughout, he somehow knew
that the darkness would lift.
Divorced and without means or
property when he left the hospital at
age 43, he began his life again.
said, 'I am flattered that she would
even remember that, and beyond
grateful that is the only story she
would tell. "
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"I3efore the ceremony, Bill and
Yitzhak engaged in a hilarious
rehearsal of the handshake, with Bill
pretending, to be Arafat as they prac-
ticed a complicated maneuver that
would prevent the Palestinian leader
from drawing too close," Clinton
recalls.
Clinton, the junior Democra.tic