Crossing California

by Adam Langer

Three close families living in the middle-class and upper-middle-class areas of Chicago's West Rogers Park neighborhood find their lives and friendships impacted by world events from 1979 to 1981, including the Iran hostage crisis, Reagan's election, and the deaths of famous musicians. 50,000 first printing.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Jewish, Book Club, Coming Of Age, Humor, Contemporary

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Adam Langer is am editor, journalist, author, playwright, filmmaker and podcast producer.

He lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Adam Brunner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Several months after first reading Crossing California, I discovered a video on author Adam Langer’s website. Narrated by Langer, the video features early 1970’s Super-8 footage of Chicago’s West Rogers Park, the neighborhood in which the novel is set. Unearthed from the basement of his parents’ home, this should have been a gem to me. I was absolutely captivated by this novel, and I admit to being something of an Adam Langer fan-boy. Strangely, my first response to this footage was dejection. The vintage home-movie footage failed miserably to measure up to the imagery of Langer’s novel. I didn’t want to learn what this world actually looked like in 1972; my own West Rogers Park was the only one I needed. I guess it was a microcosm of a tired but often accurate cliché: “The book was so much better than the movie”—or in this case, the home-movie.

Eventually, this experience forced me to a comforting revelation that I re-live more often than I should have to. The world needs great books. I read fiction to escape to a place where reality is suggested and framed out by an author, but ultimately built, defined, and experienced by each unique reader. This is an all-consuming interactive process, stretching brain muscles that otherwise go unused. The world needs great books, and Adam Langer’s debut novel is just that.

Crossing California is a momentous, heartbreakingly funny diorama of a novel, with characters at once vibrant and dopey—but almost always charming. Though essentially a coming-of-age tale, it doesn’t fit snugly into that niche. Unlike, for example, Russell Banks’s Rule of the Bone—in which focus rarely shifts from Bone—there are numerous well-developed and essential characters here. Following the intersecting lives of the Wasserstrom, Rovner, and Wills families is a rewarding pursuit, with plenty of quirks and twists along the way. Yet somehow, I think Langer’s characters are actually overshadowed by his brilliant sense of place.

Every scene in Crossing California has been thoughtfully sketched out for readers. Tucked away in the book’s front matter is a simple two-page map of West Rogers Park. The map itself is unremarkable, but I found myself obsessively consulting it as Langer’s rich prose expanded the dimensions of this neighborhood. I felt like a child with a gorgeous new pop-up book—new buildings, streets, and forests springing to life all around me. So back to the map I went, repeatedly, in search of answers to pressing questions: Where’s Mount Warren in relation to Wolfy’s Hot Dogs? What’s the best route from Ida Crown Academy to Jill Wasserstrom’s apartment? I have never cared so deeply about or felt so rewarded by the sense of place in a novel.

Finally, Langer’s readers are flawlessly transported to the late 1970s. Awkward teenage encounters, religious rites, and tales of adolescence and forced adulthood are all anchored by a keen sense of history. Langer’s references to contemporary politics, music, sports, and film—in the first chapter alone you’ll find nods to ELO, the Iran hostage crisis, and Walter Payton—ground the novel in its unmistakable era. The true genius of this book is the slick combination of so many minute details that congeal to build a swaying tower of a plot, all supported by that sturdy foundation, Langer’s uncanny sense of place. In short, this is a beautiful book. A bestseller in its own moment, it may one day be regarded among the very best “Chicago novels.”

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way...In short, the seventies were ending.

I was there! And just exactly like the characters in this book, I was in the eighth grade; junior high school purgatory. Part of me can barely stand to recall it. The other half prods at the memories the way you are compelled to pick at a scab. I am intrigued by the ways in which we remember our collective pasts. Now that my own generation is penning fiction and memoirs set in the 70s and 80s, I am eager to read other people's memories of that era and compare them with my own.

Adam Langer has written an interesting and hard to pin down family story set in the Chicago community of West Rogers Park. This neighborhood is urban and Jewish and, like many communities, it has a geographic line of class distinction. California Avenue represents the Other Side of the Tracks. If you live west of California you are safely upper middle class. If you are living east of it, you are somewhere between poor and striving.

The Wasserstroms live east of California in a dinky walk up. Widower and seventies sad sack, Charlie Wasserstrom, loves his two daughters and does his ineffectual best to raise them alone. But it is the seventies so they are often allowed to raise themselves while Charlie works his dead end restaurant jobs. Michelle is the oldest daughter, a sass mouth burnout chick who favors sex, pot and The Who over school. She is, however, an aspiring actress and the star of all the high school dramatic productions. And what an actress Michelle can be! She has many of the best lines in the book and weaves whoppers throughout for everyone's amusement -- mainly her own.

Jill is the moody high achiever and resident crank. I appreciated her prickly character although she is very maddening at times. She is the best friend, muse and eventual thorn in the side of Muley Wills, the son of a black mother and Jewish father and the character that transcends many aspects of life in the neighborhood. Muley's multiracial background distances him from the other characters as does his ingenuity and creativity. Muley and Jill are two loners who are tentatively happy together.

Lastly, the upper middle class Rovner family is featured on the better side of the tracks. Parents Michael and Ellen are the chilly self absorbed seventies parents I remember as a main feature in the novels and films of the era. The seventies was the era of Grown Ups. Parents were portrayed as independent operators who sought actualization in career, love affairs or therapy. I am not sure if Langer had this parental archetype in mind when he developed the Rovners or if he just based them on people he actually knows. But they definitely reminded me of those early Big Chill type adults. The kids, Lana and Larry, also represent the era in their independence and cunning. Lana is a manipulative bitch, to put it mildly. (Her own mother would not find fault with that description). Larry is, perhaps, more likeable. But he is also very in love with his own personal mythology, dreams of being a rock singer and generally takes himself too seriously...and to a comic degree.

The skill in the story is the manner in which the author has taken these disparate and over the top characters and pulled them together into a neat bundle in the end. Crazy and disjointed things happen throughout the plot (which can, at times, approach a rollicking pace). It will be a bit of a wild ride and you, as the reader, may wonder where it is all going. But the pieces fall into place at the end and even the most improbable aspects of the story suddenly have a point.

The general historic back drop to the action is the Iranian Hostage Crisis. This book is not, however, a memoir about this event. It plays in the background along with other stock characters from the time period. As is true with young people, the events in their own lives overshadow larger ones.

As someone who shares a birth year with several of the main characters, I enjoyed the inclusion of the 'glossary of terms' at the end of the book. It was fairly spot on with the pop cultural references. John Anderson, Barry Commoner, Mike Royko, John Denver, ELO, Chuck Mangione, Rex Smith...and Baryshnikov!! Oh, thank you Adam Langer for bringing him into this too! I had my room evenly divided between Sting and "Mischa" in 1980. I am impressed that the author recalls that Baryshnikov was basically Slavic Sex on a Stick in those days and my bedroom walls and school locker were plastered with stalkeresque shrines to his charms.

According to the author, he chose this era because 'everything changed' during the Last Days of Disco. I know that everything changed for me, personally. I still remember, quite vividly, sitting in my Latin class in January of 1980. We were just back from winter break and I had to write the date at the top of my page of hellish verb declensions. I considered that I had been writing '197.' for my entire life. (The sixties were just a toddler blur of Romper Room and elderly ladies wearing pill box hats with netting and black and white TV) Now I got to write "1980" for the first time and it gave me hope.

Surely 1978 and 79 had been the nadir of my existence. I was a nerd (used interchangeably with geek...not yet the kind of millionaire geek who makes piles developing phone apps and gets plenty of sex and money)--a nerd being psychologically bitch-slapped by the blood sport of 'junior high'. Four years ago, in the groovy Bicentennial, I had been a happy 9 and 10 year old kid doing the Hustle at sleepovers and pretending to be Wonder Woman. By 1979 I was a world weary 13 year old loser resigned to an eternity of Love Boat viewing with my parents on Saturday night.

But "1980" meant the 'next ten years'. "Ten years from now I will be 23, almost 24!" I realized. I won't be here. I'll be an adult. I might be married! I might have a kid! (Or at least a date.) "1980" gave me permission to go home and spend the next 4 years riding out high school and plotting my exit from Geauga County like some third rate anarchist.

I wrote off those years and looked to the future as something more glamorous and less stifling than the present. The eighties certainly delivered in superficial upward mobility and theatricality. I had a very fun decade, despite my immersion in underground music and my preference for thrift store garb and Die Yuppie Scum fashion statements. (Yes, the character of Jill spoke to me.) But I forgot the good things about what came first. And this smart and quirky story brought a lot of it back for me.

[robin friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Crossing California

"Crossing California" is a long, sprawling first novel set in Rogers Park, a mostly Jewish area of Chicago, in 1979-1980 against the background of the Iranian hostage crisis and the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency. It is gratuitously anti-Reagan in tone. The book received substantial attention upon its publication in 2004 together with mostly favorable, but mixed critical reviews. The book tells the story of adolescence and of troubled families during this time and place. Although the novel has a strong sense of place and description and is, in places, perceptive and funny, the book failed for me. It is overlong, and, although limited to its particular setting, somehow too broad and ambitious for what it achieves. The book is mannered and too clever. The author seems more interested in calling attention to himself and his writing than to telling a story from the heart. I was unclear about what the author was trying to do, particularly as his book raises issues of sexuality, religion, raising children, and American life. In places, he seems to have an almost sentimental feeling for his characters. But the story is hardly nostalgic. Its predominant tone seemed to me to be one of shrillness and moralizing. Judging from some of the reviews here on Amazon and elsewhere, other readers as well had difficulty in telling where this book was going.

The book has a large -- far too large -- cast of characters, but it focuses on three dysfunctional families and on their adolescent children. There are two Jewish families, the Rovners and the Wasserstroms and one black family the Wills. The Rovners are educated and well to do, with a radiologist father who is addicted to pornography, and a self-centered, cold mother who is a clinical psychologist. They have two children a boy and a girl. The Wassertstroms, from across California Street, are from a different social class. They include Charlie, the well-meaning but weak and poorly educated father and two girls.

The Wills family consists of Deidre, who reads a great deal but wallows in self-pity and anger, and her son, Muley, enterprising and an aspiring adolescent photographer. He is in love with Jill Wasserstrom, age 13, and a fiery radical. Young Jill sees Muley as "a friend" -- that bane of adolescence and otherwise -- but spurns him romantically for much of the book. Heavy stuff for a 13 year old. Muley was the product of a brief relationship between Deidre and an egocentric Jewish producer of rock and roll records. To me, he was the only appealing character in this book.

A great deal of the book centers on the sexuality of its adolescent characters and of their muddling, equally confused parents. There is a hands-on focus on masturbation, of course, but the characters show little inhibition in the matter of sex with a partner. The characters are also fully engaged with alcohol, drugs, smoking, shoplifting and stealing, and the like. With all this, the author never fails to remind of the precociousness and intellectual gifts of many of the kids, in terms of SAT scores, acting and musical abilities, writing and the like. For the most part, the Jewish adolescents in the story socialize and become sexually involved among themselves. In that sense, they are rather insular. While the characters exhibit varying attitudes towards their Jewishness, they all tend to look down upon non-Jews and to exhibit prejudice towards blacks. This kind of well-near universal human failing as far as one's own group and others is concerned is returned many-fold against the characters in the book and elsewhere. The parents in the book seem incapable of providing their offspring with direction even if they so wished. The wealthy Rovners are divorcing and caught in their own sexual and other fantasies. Charlie Wasserstrom is unable to make a success of himself or to guide his daughters. Again, I had trouble telling where the author was trying to go, but his overall tone was withering.

The book does not have a single plot line, which is not necessarily a fault in a contemporary novel. But here it produces a badly organized work which soon disintegrates into a series of short, interrelated viginettes. The detail of the book is fascinating in places but it also tends to distract. I struggled to find parallels for the book. Saul Bellow first came to mind for the connection to Chicago, but in every respect "Crossing California" falls short. I thought of "American Graffiti", but more often the book seemed to me a version of "Porkys" with the focus on the crudities of adolescent sex. The widely-read novel "The Correction" and other similar lengthy books with a seemingly endless flow of social criticism and merciless satire seem to me to offer the closest parallel to this novel.

Possibly I am over-thinking and over-reacting to the book. Some of the publicity for the novel and some reviews suggest it is mostly a light story about coming of age in a particular time and place. But I still found the book wooden and didactic. Although the book is not autobiographical, the presence of the author was intrusive. The book was not fun to read, and it didn't help me to understand the place, time, and issues with which it is concerned.

Robin Friedman

[Rachael Sherwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crossing California is the story of three families living in the West Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, IL and takes place during the Iran Hostage Crisis. While the country transitions from the Carter years to the beginning of the 1980s and Reaganomics, the three families also find themselves going through major transitions.

I picked up this book simply because I live in Rogers Park and figured even if I didn't care for it, I could still learn a bit about my neighborhood's history and enjoy reading about familiar places. I did learn a lot about Rogers Park (Langer is incredibly detail oriented, you get a very vivid picture of what the area looked, smelled, and felt like in 1979), but happily I found a lot more to love in it.

This is a character driven piece. The plot moves at the pace of everyday life; there are no big manufactured dramatic scenes, but I still found myself running back to the book for more. The characters, particularly the teenagers, were so alive and real, they jumped off the page and demanded my attention. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to everyone, I think a lot of people might find it boring or wonder exactly where it's going. But for anyone who likes slice of life, interwoven stories, pieces that capture a certain place & time, or care more for characters than plot, go get thee to a bookstore and pick this up!

[Mary Billinghurst · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading Crossing California on a day when I had a lot of time to get into the book. As a result, I found myself transported to the West Rogers Park neighbourhood of Chicago. I felt I knew these characters, as if they were people in my school or community. 200 pages into the novel, I was enthralled.

Then, as I read on, my enthusiasm waned. The story went on too long; many of the characters became tedious in their self absorption, and, in my opinion, the author seemed to be enjoying his own cleverness a little too much. I wanted more from the novel, some deep meaning that eluded me, but I never found it.

Langer's style is unique in two ways that set his narration apart. Firstly, he avoids dialogue in favour of an omniscient narrator, who relates conversations second-hand. I found this technique a little off-putting. I wonder why he chose to do this. Secondly, he likes to layer his narration, so that some events recur when the tale is told with a different focal character. This, I thought, worked quite well, and allowed Langer to stretch a day, like New Year's Eve, 1979, over many pages.

Overall, my appreciation to the book lessened as I continued to read it. This novel had great potential but never achieved it

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

As far as I'm concerned, this book and its sequel, The Washington Story, are must-reads. Together, they cover around a decade in the lives of a bunch of Jewish kids growing up on Chicago's north side. They are long, dense, and really funny (I don't tend to laugh a lot when reading, but these books did it). I'd read another one tomorrow.

[Jill Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

To me, the mark of a good novel is that when I'm finished reading, I want to pick up the phone, call the author, and say, "Write more about these characters!". And, that's what I'd like to do here.

Langer writes about quirky, interesting, people in a little visited time, the late '70's and early '80's. The book is set on the North Side of Chicago. The ten or so main characters intersect in wonderful and strange ways. Often a supporting name will pop up in a different mix than orginally set. There's very little plot to "Crossing", but that doesn't matter.

So, Mr Langer, pleae write a second novel and let us know what happens!
PS - I'll never quite use the word "which" the same way again, after reading this book!

[Amyruszkiewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down one of the best novels I have ever read. I first read it in 2005 when I was a grad student at the university of Chicago. I loved this novel for its rendering of a city I had fallen in love with. Ten years later I'm still crazy about its amazing characters brought to life extremely tenderly. A masterpiece.

[Carly Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good coming of age Jewish fiction that follows several characters in West Rodgers Park from 1979-1981. Funny and grounded in the place and time period with memorable characters. It was interesting how the neighborhood and parenting has changed in the past 40+ years

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it! Not the most complex or profound book in the world, but enjoyable and engaging, plus the Roger's Park backdrop was super fun and familiar!

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

adam langer is OBSESSIVELY attentive to detail. the sheer number of pronouns in this book is probably more than in any book i've ever read. he faithfully, resolutely, precisely "reps the hood", not only his hood, but his hood, west rogers park, at a very specific point in time--1979-1981, when being liberal was on its way "out" and reaganism/reaganomics was taking over. my aunts used to live in a bungalow on morse in rogers park, so some places he mentioned were familiar, like fluky's. not only is the setting extremely vividly described, but the characters practically jump off the page too, they seem so real. i especially loved the wasserstroms (the whole family) and the character of larry rovner, who reminded me of so many yarmulke-wearing, brandeis-bound jewish kids i knew in high school. he also throws in a ton of historically accurate pop-culture references. it's very clear he did his research.

i was a little resentful when langer only described evanston (my hometown) as a "dim white suburb" where "everyone was rich"; here, he could have used his obsessive habit of "specifying" to specify exactly which parts of evanston he was referring to, but instead chose to broadly generalize. north and east evanston, of course, like north and east chicago, are generally wealthy and nicer, but the south and west corners of evanston get pretty rough. of course, people in evanston tend to be wealthier than people in rogers park, and there's a lot of gentrification going on. but considering that langer went to evanston township high school (where i also went), a school with a nearly 40% black/60% white ratio that sits on one of the sketchiest corners in town, he should have known better and given it a little bit of credit over say, wilmette (a snootier, richer, whiter northern suburb which he equalized with evanston). regardless, i really enjoyed reading this book and was sad when it was over. you know the feeling. i really have a lot of admiration for him to try and capture a place and time so precisely and i love that he has so much pride for his home neighborhood, which is pretty underrpresented in literature, i guess. (i don't know of any other famous contemporary novels about west rogers park in 1980, do you?) he also wrote very rich characters, whether they were likeable or unlikeable (what a little bitch lana rovner was!) a good read for people who love chicago, or just love obsessive description.

[Lindsay Edwardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredible! It takes place in Chicago from 1979-1981. It is the story of a small number of people whose lives are all intertwined in various ways. I thought it was really fun to read because of all of the places that are mentioned that I live around or know about. Also, I think that the characterization is great. The characters all seem very real and honest. I think that any student from the Chicagoland area would appreciate reading this because they would be familiar with the area. I do think, however, that this is a book for more mature adolescents because of the language and the topics discussed.

One of the things that could be traced throughout this book if it were read in the classroom is cause and effect. The events in this book are so directly related to one another that it would be helpful to point that out. This is also something that is very important in history. Sequencing would also be good to apply here, in order to trace the events that occur in the historical context of the novel as well as the events that directly involve the characters.

[Bookmarks Magazine]

Until recently, Langer was known primarily as a playwright and the author of a film festival compendium, but that's about to change. Reviewers have heaped the kind of praise on Crossing California for which most first-time novelists would sacrifice their coffee and nicotine. Critics zeroed in on Langer's biting wit (the youngest Rovner's song, "My Love Ain't Always Orthodox," is a particular fave) and lauded his depiction of youthful disaffection, embodied in characters like Jill, the intellectual outcast who defends the Ayatollah Khomeini in order to get a rise from her peers. The minor complaints: a few blanched at Langer's frank depiction of adolescent sexual high jinks and alleged that California sinks from the weight of its multiple story lines. The Plain Dealer claims the novel does not deliver on its ambition, while all the other critics enthusiastically say it does.

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yet another Chicago-related book. This one covers the early 1980s and the lives of several families in the northern suburbish area called Rogers Park. California is in reference to the street in Chicago, not the state, and how it marks a line between neighborhoods. Chicago is, afterall, a city of neighborhoods and also a city with an obvious divide between races. Growing up in the Southern U.S. I never thought I would encounter such disctinctions between race as I have found in Chicago. This book delves into the lives of various families and teenagers of various socio-economic backgrounds and religions and forms a great story of the future and the past coming together. That kind of makes sense, but you need to read to understand. Favorite part: Rovner!

[Astrid · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Portrayal of the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago and its mostly Jewish inhabitants around 1979-1981. Started strong, but there were too many characters to keep track of (and the author seemed obsessed with masturbation, oy!)After a while, I just wanted to get the book finished, the characters became tiresome and the ending was sudden. I turned the page expecting there to be another chapter, but there wasn't. This is the first in what I guess is a trilogy. Too bad, I had high hopes for this book in the beginning, but it just flattened out on me.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

My son plays soccer in West Rogers Park, so I really enjoyed immersing myself in this neighborhood as it was in the 70s. Langer so accurately and comedically captures the psychology of teenagers. I love the way his characters work through their obsession with / confusion about / aversion to sex, the way they often lie to save face in a particularly teenage way, and the ways they develop their Jewish / ethnic / political / artistic identities. Great characters and an expertly interwoven plot. So much fun to see characters show up when you least expect them.

[Jeffrey Hart · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very fine book about growing up in Chicago. Filled with funny and interesting characters.

[Elisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tutti i personaggi di questo libro sono tratteggiati in modo delizioso. Una lettura piacevolissima.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Smart, quirky, and laugh-out-loud funny. Loved it!

[Melissa Arkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story but could be half as long.

[Bridget · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a delightful surprise! My husband picked this up at a used book sale and handed it to me: "This looks like something you might like." I kind of rolled my eyes. I had never heard of it, and I RARELY read a book just by the cover. I keep a list, pages deep, or go on recommendations at the library. But recently, I was waiting on a book that I ordered, so I decided to give this a try as I was waiting.

My husband was only half right: I did like it, But more than that, I LOVED it. I love books that create a whole community of characters and where the place is a character in its own right. It's clear that Adam Langer sees these characters and the place so clearly in his mind. There's no vagueness. He makes them come alive. The stakes are not particularly high, it's just very particular characters living in a very particular time. The book was published in 2004, and it feels like a story even older than that--in a good way. I wish there were more books like this, not so topical, but the drama and comedy of people living their lives. I'm definitely going to check out more of Adam Langer's books.

I guess my ONLY quibble of the story was the character of Jill. It's clear that the author sees her as one of his favorite characters. I felt that she was the only one who was a bit boring to read. She's a True Believer about politics, and I understand that some people are True Believers about all kinds of things that make them kind of one note and blind to everything else. But she had absolutely no contradictions, no vulnerabilities, and that didn't seem very realistic to me, especially since everyone else was so finely crafted.

Favorite Quotes:

"It had been several years since Muley had been particularly interested in school. Science and Math were easy. Of the books covered in Reading, he had either read them before or heard his mother describe them in detail. When he hadn't read a story, it was usually because it was something didactic and dull, something with a message so blatant that Deirdre Wills would never have patronized her son with it, something replete with labored symbolism--something, say, about a world full of green people who shun a purple person within their midst." (Pg. 248)

[Robert Natale · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hold on a second..............nope, I can't seem to find it. I'm looking for a way to rate a book zero stars but it won't seem to work. So-------here's what you do. Whatever average rating it says the book has?? Downgrade it a smidge for the zero I wasn't able to assign.

On the cover of my copy no less than Newsday and Entertainment Weekly use the word "Hilarious" in their blurb about the novel.

Hilarious.

So let's see. Lucy----eating too many chocolates from the conveyor belt in order to keep pace?? Hilarious. Groucho and Harpo doing the mirror bit?? Hilarious. Sid Caesar and Howard Morris doing the "Uncle Goopy" sketch? Hilarious.

Crossing California? Not a single smile. Really----was it supposed to be the girl doing a Russian accent?? Was it Larry's lame song titles?

I hated this book. (Or did you guess that by now?? You're getting ahead of me here, you rascal)
I did not care for a single character-----the story itself was pointless and the book seemed to last as long as a toothache on a Sunday.

Read something else.

[Zak Yudhishthu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this novel, which threads together the lives of a few families in the primarily Jewish community of West Rodgers Park. The book takes place in 1979-1980.

I loved this book’s strong emphasis on place, including both the micro geography of Rodgers Park and Chicago at large. I also think Langer successfully wove the different characters’ lives together. This was a nice way to depict the community of this neighborhood.

Ultimately, the characters weren’t always fleshed out in full detail, at times limiting how much I could connect with them and buy into the plot.

Still, a great and worthwhile read, especially if you’re a Chicagoan.

[Rebekah Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can and have read this book over and over - it’s rich enough to start afresh and not think “didn’t I just read this?” West Rogers Park lives and breathes as surely as any Wasserstrom, Wills, or Rovner. The storylines are woven, not tangled, and don’t sacrifice pace for the sake of cramming in detail or jumping to another POV. This has been not only one of my favorite books to read for years, it’s aspirational for me as an author. Its follow-up, The Washington Story, is a must-have if you enjoy Crossing California.

[Tom Whalen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Abandoning this book again, just cannot get into it.

I read this when it was newly published, I was living in Chicago after college and absolutely loved the story. I delivered trucks in the area previously and was playing soccer up off Damen and Foster which isn't too far south of Warren Park. And I loved the book then, but have tried twice in the last few years to re-read it and I can't get past the first 50 pages or so.

Maybe it's still a good book and it was right for the time and place in my life I was when I read it the first time.

[Caroline Berkowitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crossing California is a love letter to the WRP neighborhood, an intimate, in-depth portrayal of a community in which the streets and other landmarks are characters in the story just as much as the human beings.

The book is laugh-out-loud hilarious with characters who all have their own backstories and interests that push them to make wise and unwise decisions. Could that be anything more like real life?

Also, the glossary, which I did not discover until I was 3/4 of the way through the book — chef’s kiss, an absolute work of beauty.

[Sean]

A wry, sharp-tongued yet warm-hearted look at three families with adolescent children in and around the Jewish community of West Rogers Park during the 444 days of the Iran Hostage Crisis. I grew to care about these characters even as my sympathies waxed and waned as they careened through their relationships and lives. It gets rather sprawling toward the end but the characters and insights hold it together. It was also cool to see my current neighborhood as it was during the time when I was born (less than a mile away).

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title suggests, there’s a lot of movement in “Crossing California.” Movement across social and cultural lines (the stretch of California Avenue in the West Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago is seen as a dividing line between the well-to-do and the not-quite-there), movement from childhood to adolescence, movement out of marriage, movement past grief, and movement into a new era (end of the ‘70s/start of the ‘80s; Carter into Reagan). Everybody’s moving, but most would rather stay put.

The book’s locations are so precise and vivid, it’s amazing to realize that, unlike other grossly gentrified areas of town, West Rogers Park still looks quite a bit like it does here. Even as a 14-year resident of Chicago, I was amazed at how easily I could visualize all of these places. Langer’s great gift is that even readers who have never seen West Rogers Park could probably visualize most of these locations with some accuracy.

The shifting perspectives and narrative moods was handled masterfully. The kids’ stories and handled with the same nuance and emotional heft as the adult stories (but not more, fortunately – this isn’t John Hughes/”Freaks & Geeks” territory), and one of the most compelling romantic entanglements is between 12 year olds Jill Wasserstrom and Muley Wills. Langer details the complexities of an emotional state seldom seen in adult novels, giving a voice to the people in society who aren’t interested in (or are scared by) the complexities of romantic love. Both Jill and Muley would rather absorb themselves in their work, but by the story’s end, Muley would throw it all away to just slow dance with a girl and kiss her, tasting the cigarettes and Dr. Pepper on her breath. He’s ready to cross over. We assume that Jill will eventually find this point, too, but for now, she’s more interested in writing about politics and supporting underdog political candidates. Adult relationships are treated with the same dignity, and the same unsparing eye. Ellen and Michael Rovner’s crumbling marriage flickers between hilarity and deep, long-repressed fury; Charlie Wasserstrom can’t understand why his new bride treats him so sweetly at home, but so sternly when she has to be his boss – who are these two different women? Deirdre Wills’ predicament would seem absurd in other books, but Langer makes it real: if you’re trying to educate yourself so that you can become an English teacher while having to clean houses and raise your son alone, what would you do? Does it seem outlandish that she’d read every novel in her small local library? What would you do? Where do you start that uphill trudge without money or support? Her Quixotic plan to “read the library” seems no more or less absurd than Muley’s desire to both further his art as an animator and raise enough money to put his mother through college.

That said, Muley Wills is the most difficult character because he’s just so damn perfect. A diligent son, an accomplished stop-motion animator (at 13? Really?), and a person beloved by every (EVERY) shop owner down the street, each of them waiting out behind the alley to give him bags of day-old bagels, slightly burned falafel, expired batteries, and other castouts. Having one or two confidants in his dumpster-diving seems plausible, but this supposed procession of 4 or 5 shop owners, all of whom are happy to have Muley Wills (a black/jewish kid from east of Western Avenue) be their own personal dumpster curator, and who make time in their work day to meet him at 4:45 promptly strains credulity. He makes $50 at a time on essay contests and a few hundred building inventions, all of which he’s squirreling away for his mother’s education. In a world of well-meaning but flawed (and real) characters, Muley’s never-fail philanthropy seems too good to be true.

There are many other moments in the book like that, little nits that cried out to be picked and discarded. For example: were VCRs really that prominent in 1980 that families on both side of the California Avenue economic dividing line owned them? And if so, did libraries rent VHS tapes in 1979? And if so, did they really rent “The Seventh Seal”? Langer indulges this heightened reality at times to fuel his characters’ emotional engines, so even if I rolled my eyes a dozen times or more at gentle anachronisms and physics-challenged donut holes, I’m happy to let them all go. Langer’s accomplishment is successfully juggling at least a dozen distinct points of view and twice as many story threads within them, criss-crossing between work woes, infidelity, Jewish school, politics, kids TV, the politics of kids TV, life changes, cultural shifts, scrambled porno stations on cable (a topic I wish was addressed in more coming-of-age books), and finding your way in the world. The characters are so finely drawn, we understand their dreams, fears, and predicaments within the first 50 pages, no small feat when you're talking about a dozen primary characters and two dozen secondary.

The downsides of this book were minor (it's a solid 4.5 star review), and will probably melt away as I think more about it. The upsides are considerable – for a 420 page book, it was accessible, fun, funny, emotionally dead-on, and ambitious in its scope. I was quite sad to see the characters leave me at the end of the book, but don’t worry – your heroes will be back in Langer’s sequel, “The Washington Story.”

[Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some very strong character moments in this book and Langer is able to illuminate a number of people. I found the setting obtrusive. I understand what he was going for in invoking the street names and places in that neighborhood of Chicago (which I am vaguely familiar with since my grandparents lived there), but I got tired of reading about it. I was interested in the people more than the places.

[Dana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate the cover of this book. It's also about 150 pages too long. I'm not sure what the message of this was... Also, did teenagers bone, smoke and drink that much in the late 70s?? Was I that straight-edge or did Nancy Reagan's "just say no" work better than they thought on us elder millennials?

I live in the Northside, so the street references were fun. Funny though, because living east of California almost anywhere else north of downtown is considered fancy comparatively speaking.