Sunday Jews [Paperback]

Hortense Calisher has been hailed as stand[ing] vividly with Cather and Fitzgerald (Cynthia Ozick). In this, her latest and most lauded novel, she explores a family united in blood yet divided by ideas. Son Charles hopes to be a Supreme Court justice; family beauty Nell has children by different lovers; art expert Erika has a nose job; and artist Zach has two wives. Their mother, infamous in Israel, born of a well-to-do Boston background but no longer rich, is bound to a past that never quite dies. The buried history of this extraordinary--and very American--family comes to light unexpectedly when grandson Bert brings home as a wife the woman who, years ago, joined the family circle, then mysteriously disappeared.

Told with wit and deep acuity,Sunday Jewsis a tour de force from a writer whose fiction has justly been compared with that of Eudora Welty and Henry James, and whose ability to delineate our lives is unparalleled.

In this family of six grown children is a clan as united in its blood yet scattered wide-like the elder son Charles, hoping to be a Supreme Court Judge; the family beauty and District Attorney Nell with children by different lovers; the art-expert sister Erika-Freddi whose altered nose hasn't kept her from being custodian of their Jewishness; or Zach, artist and manipulator with two wives at home.
Over all is their mother, Zipporah-Zoe: infamous in Israel, American academic, born of a well-to-do Boston background but not nowadays rich. She is intellectualised, yet bound in memory to all the embroidery past of the women in the family, which never quite dies. Zipporah-Zoe is married in an eternally sexual love-match, to a non-Jew and archetypal father.
Challenging them is Bert the grandson, who will become ordained as a rabbi yet hang back from the synagogue. Interspersed throughout is the buried history of their most significant Sunday visitor, Lev. He will ultimately bring Debra, the young Sabra nurse l#