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Being Esther
In spare, refreshingly unsentimental prose, Miriam Karmel has given us one of literature’s finest portraits of the last days of a woman’s life. At once sad and amusing, unpretentious and ambitious, Karmel’s fiction debut brings understanding and tremendous empathy to the character of Esther Lustig, a woman readers will recognize and embrace.
Born to parents who fled the shtetl, Esther Lustig has led a seemingly conventional life—marriage, two children, a life in suburban Chicago. Now, at the age of eighty-five, her husband is deceased, her children have families of their own, and most of her friends are gone. Even in this diminished condition, life has its moments of richness, as well as its memorable characters. Being Esther is an exploration of aging, a search for meaning, and about the need, as Esther puts it, for better roadmaps for growing old.
Born to parents who fled the shtetl, Esther Lustig has led a seemingly conventional life—marriage, two children, a life in suburban Chicago. Now, at the age of eighty-five, her husband is deceased, her children have families of their own, and most of her friends are gone. Even in this diminished condition, life has its moments of richness, as well as its memorable characters. Being Esther is an exploration of aging, a search for meaning, and about the need, as Esther puts it, for better roadmaps for growing old.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
53 people are currently reading
524 people want to read
About the author
Miriam Karmel
3 books5 followersA journalist and freelance writer, Miriam Karmel has published writing in AARP The Magazine, Minnesota Women’s Press, Bellevue Literary Review, and Minnesota Monthly. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Sandisfield, Massachusetts. Being Esther is her first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 121 reviews
February 6, 2013
This delightful book is about Esther, age 85, and her last few months before her death. She as real as any character I've ever fallen in love with. She has some regrets, some joys, and a whole lot of opinions. She's a normal woman who had a normal life. a normal marriage, a normal motherhood, but there is a spark to her that just won't fade. She's the same person she's always been, as she sees it, though admittedly older, creakier, slower. A simple life is not a boring life--not by any means. Thank you, Esther, for reminding me of that! What a delightful book, even if it did end up making me cry.
April 18, 2013
I found Being Esther to be a marvelous, five-star character study, but I could only give it two stars as a novel. Esther eloquently and elegantly personifies the joys and struggles of old age, but nothing actually happens. Esther has complex relationships with her husband, daughter (her son is barely mentioned), and friends, but the ups and downs of those relationships seem to go nowhere - no insights, closure, or change.
May 24, 2018
Much can be told about the society by the way they perceive their elderly. Pity often gets confused with co passion. By whether they are met with veneration or frustration or profound respect, one thing is often overlooked and that is they are still a person, just someone who’s been one for much longer. Not a symbol of bygone era or a relic, but a person. And the author depicted this aspect of living really well in her debut, getting older can be bewildering, because to you you’re still the same, the years just sneak up. Esther has been around for 85 years and now at the dusk of her life she is leading a relatively comfortable solitary existence of self sufficiency and reflection in an apartment building in Chicago. The novel alternates between past and present, presenting an ordinary life, because well, that’s how life is. Only really extraordinary to those living it, more often than not. It’s a very quiet sort of story, meditative, pensive, but it’s really well done. The author’s done a great job of creating a complex intricate protagonist out of glimpses of other times and events, much like those portraits that are made of smaller portraits (there must be a proper name for those) so that when you zoom in there is so much detail and when you zoom out there’s a person. And seriously, everyone should spend time with the elderly. You may not discover the secrets to life, but you’ll get a new perspective, hear some fun stories and be reminded of proper manners…and that’s at the very least. Lovely, really, much like this book.
November 12, 2018
This close study of an 85 year old woman is almost like science fiction with its enchantments and terrors, homey familiarity and startling awareness of the present. It also contains one of my favorite lines "I didn't make the world." No one writes about people like Esther, so thank you, Miriam Karmel.
April 21, 2013
Esther Lustig is an 85 year-old woman living independently in urban Chicago. She has a daughter, Ceely who would like to see her in an assisted living facility, a place that Esther calls ‘bingoland’. Esther also sees assisted living as the ‘land of the living dead’. Independence is very important to her and she wants to preserve it as long as she possibly can.
Esther is the child of parents who escaped from a Polish shtetl. She was always the good girl. Even in her marriage of 50 years to her now dead husband, Marty, she never rocked the boat. She’d purse her lips but would go along with Marty at the end. “For Esther, survival has always depended on blending in, as if the next pogrom were about to sweep through the village and her only hope was to lay low.”
Esther wishes that “there were better road maps for growing old”. She’s terrified of getting dementia like her old friend Helen who painted her eyebrows with lipstick and is now in assisted living. When Esther visits Helen she is aware that there is an empty space where her friend once resided.
She and her friend Lorraine have a system. Every day one of them calls the other to make sure that they are alive. If the phone goes unanswered they know there is trouble and they should dial 911.
Esther just “longs for an ordinary morning with Marty at her side, listening to the news, the weather, the traffic updates, a morning when she doesn’t wake and wonder if today is the day when her body finally succumbs, overtakes her, the day when she falls and breaks a hip, has a stroke, or worse, loses her marbles before her heart stops beating.”
Alternatingly humorous and poignant, this novel is about Esther’s aging, a story that could be about any one of us. Esther has two difficult children to deal with, has all her facilities and remembers so much of her life. Her body, however, is betraying her. She is frail and weak though she can be a pistol at times.
Esther has the urge to tell people that “growing old is one of the most surprising things that has happened to her. She hadn’t given it any thought. Then, one day she was 85. She is old. Not just old, but an object of derision, pity. Is there any use explaining that she is still herself – albeit a slower, achier, creakier version of the original?”
This book is a small gem, a short novel about a large theme. Ms. Karmel really understands Esther and the reader grows to care for Esther deeply. I read the novel in two sittings and recommend it highly.
Esther is the child of parents who escaped from a Polish shtetl. She was always the good girl. Even in her marriage of 50 years to her now dead husband, Marty, she never rocked the boat. She’d purse her lips but would go along with Marty at the end. “For Esther, survival has always depended on blending in, as if the next pogrom were about to sweep through the village and her only hope was to lay low.”
Esther wishes that “there were better road maps for growing old”. She’s terrified of getting dementia like her old friend Helen who painted her eyebrows with lipstick and is now in assisted living. When Esther visits Helen she is aware that there is an empty space where her friend once resided.
She and her friend Lorraine have a system. Every day one of them calls the other to make sure that they are alive. If the phone goes unanswered they know there is trouble and they should dial 911.
Esther just “longs for an ordinary morning with Marty at her side, listening to the news, the weather, the traffic updates, a morning when she doesn’t wake and wonder if today is the day when her body finally succumbs, overtakes her, the day when she falls and breaks a hip, has a stroke, or worse, loses her marbles before her heart stops beating.”
Alternatingly humorous and poignant, this novel is about Esther’s aging, a story that could be about any one of us. Esther has two difficult children to deal with, has all her facilities and remembers so much of her life. Her body, however, is betraying her. She is frail and weak though she can be a pistol at times.
Esther has the urge to tell people that “growing old is one of the most surprising things that has happened to her. She hadn’t given it any thought. Then, one day she was 85. She is old. Not just old, but an object of derision, pity. Is there any use explaining that she is still herself – albeit a slower, achier, creakier version of the original?”
This book is a small gem, a short novel about a large theme. Ms. Karmel really understands Esther and the reader grows to care for Esther deeply. I read the novel in two sittings and recommend it highly.
August 21, 2014
This is such a tight, funny, quiet, sad and unpretentious book about aging. Written from the point of view of an 85 year old Jewish Midwestener, the prose is reminiscent of Deborah Eisenberg's, especially in its humor, but it is more nuanced, less neurotic, more reigned in. I highly recommend this lovely book even though it left me feeling quite sad.
Here's an excerpt where Esther is describing her son-in-law:
"At times like this Esther finds herself scrutinizing Lenny's face, as if after all these years, something new might present itself. He has a strong nose and a fringe of graying hair, the texture of Brillo. In his frenzied, professorial state, he reminds her of the fuzzy "New Yorker" cartoon characters she so enjoys. The first time Ceely brought Lenny home, Esther could barely contain her disappointment."
And another where she ruminates on the different pastimes of her aging friend, Helen:
"Esther remembers when Helen took a crash course at Berlitz. Then, after returning from Paris, she bought a stovetop espresso pot at a shop in Old Town and sweet-smelling cigarettes from the stand in Evanston that sold out-of-town newspapers and that racing gazette. After her French phase, Helen did nothing but knit mohair shawls. For a while, she was consumed by baking yeast breads, and then she planted a perennial garden."
This great book is from Milkweed Editions, in paperback. Buy it! Buy it now!
Here's an excerpt where Esther is describing her son-in-law:
"At times like this Esther finds herself scrutinizing Lenny's face, as if after all these years, something new might present itself. He has a strong nose and a fringe of graying hair, the texture of Brillo. In his frenzied, professorial state, he reminds her of the fuzzy "New Yorker" cartoon characters she so enjoys. The first time Ceely brought Lenny home, Esther could barely contain her disappointment."
And another where she ruminates on the different pastimes of her aging friend, Helen:
"Esther remembers when Helen took a crash course at Berlitz. Then, after returning from Paris, she bought a stovetop espresso pot at a shop in Old Town and sweet-smelling cigarettes from the stand in Evanston that sold out-of-town newspapers and that racing gazette. After her French phase, Helen did nothing but knit mohair shawls. For a while, she was consumed by baking yeast breads, and then she planted a perennial garden."
This great book is from Milkweed Editions, in paperback. Buy it! Buy it now!
October 31, 2015
This book really caught me by surprise. I picked it up at the local library where I volunteer, intrigued by the write up on the back. As a woman in my mid-forties, I've become very contemplative of how quickly time seems to be going by. It seems like my twenties weren't so long ago, yet here I am, double that age now. It makes me wonder if one day I'll be thinking the same exact thing when I'm in my eighties about my forties. This book not only deals with time and the inevitable process of aging, but the remarkably complex relationship that exists between mothers and daughters. So much of the sentiment and emotion in this story is spot-on. I found myself wanting to be kinder and more patient in my interactions with my own mom. This book has so much beauty and sensitivity within it. I truly didn't expect to find the range and depth of emotion within its pages that I found. A great read, full of compassion and understanding for the beauty and frailty that coincide within each and every one of us.
April 30, 2013
Wonderful character study of the thoughts and inner life of an 85 year old woman who has lost her husband and many of her friends. She is still herself, albeit "a slower, achier, creakier version of the original", but contends with the patronizing attitudes that many have towards the elderly. I was quickly drawn into the book and soon found myself caring about Esther. I love first novels that work and this one does.
July 11, 2013
Depressing book about 85 year old Esther, whose daughter is trying to convince her to move into a Home. The book is full of Esther's meandering thoughts. As reader we get to experience Esther's mind wandering, with no clear sense of the order of events. I don't know what the author intended the reader to take from this book; to me I was eager just to get out of the unlikable Esther's head.
May 30, 2018
Depressing, no direction, not much love personified by Esther’s family characters. I could certainly identify with the feeling of frustration Esther felt as old age limitations encompassed her. I would liked to have seen more joy from her for the long life she had and the experiences that made her smile. She had some, didn’t she??
June 20, 2024
To nie jest kolejna zwykła książka, ktora jedt krótka więc można ją przeczytać w jeden wieczór, nie dla mnie. Każdy fragment coś niósł i poddawał refleksji, może to nie była wybitna książka zmieniająca życie, ale myślę że każdy kiedyś powinien Przeczytać przemyślenia starszej osoby u schyłku jej lat... bo wszystkich nas to czeka, nie odebrane telefony od przyjaciół bo już odeszli, trudności w prostych codziennych sprawach, rozmyślanie i doszukiwanie się tego jak ty było kiedyś i jakież dawne decyzję doprowadziły nas do tego jacy jesteśmy dziś... Dla mnie książka inna niż wszystkie, niezwykle poruszająca, wrażliwa, a mam ochotę usiąść koło Esther lub innej starszej osoby i po prostu chłonąć świat jej oczami..
May 20, 2022
A year in the life of an 85-year old woman. Interesting perspective and insights but no plot. I liked it, but I was also glad for it to be over.
August 22, 2014
A real charmer on many levels. Though Karmel lives in Minneapolis, she knows Chicago so well that it is an essential element for enjoying the book. Esther is 85 and doesn't want to move to assisted living as her family thinks she should. She likes her life just as it is. Her life becomes more narrow as her friends don't remember her; she isn't allowed to drive anymore, but she has fond memories of her husband and her earlier life. Karmel has written quite a fresh view of aging in this first novel. Hope she is working on another. And she thanks Ragdale Foundation for the time and space to write it.
May 23, 2013
This book fell a bit flat for me. Esther is an 85 year old widow who is trying to live out the end of her life. She has two kids, and she is trying to stay out of a nursing home. The characters were a bit flat, and while I thought Esther was a cool character, overall, I didn't connect with her and felt the book was a chore to get through.
July 1, 2013
Enjoyed this book, but it is a little sad. Made me think of my mom and all the elderly mothers of my friends. Esther - I think - just wants to keep on "being Esther" as old age takes it's toll. I really enjoyed it.
October 21, 2014
Omg. So amazing. An awesome character study, with depth and humor. It was absolutely charming. I would definitely recommend this!
January 29, 2015
I would have liked to have given it a 4.5. Many areas in the book reminded me of Olive Kitteridge, which I loved.
February 22, 2022
Esther is such a funny and strong character. My heart goes out to her when her adult kids treat her like a little kid and how some challenges, she has that make it hard. At the same time, this loveable 85-year-old Single (widowed) woman didn't want to be a burden. She hasn't always made the best decisions in her life and there were some struggles connecting with her kids at times. Her last days was what she wanted filling with last minute adventures and final tasks, so her daughter doesn't have to do them. At the end, it was too neat and tidy; but from what I read, it's what Esther was like as a person. Her story reminds me on how we should give our 80 something year old relatives their dignity. Yes, they may have memory issues or mobility problems or other health-related issues; they also need to be treated respectfully and do our best to hear from what they want in their lives. I love Esther.
June 12, 2017
Perhaps this is the kind of book that either appeals to you or doesn't based on where you are in your own life. It makes you think deeply about aging and relationships between mothers and daughters. Esther recalls her relationship with her own mother and we experience the tension between Esther and her daughter. Although I felt it was an easy read it wasn't necessarily a quick or gripping read. Yet, I felt the book had something important to say.
June 6, 2022
This novel, written in spare, lyrical prose, takes place during the last few months of Esther's life. At 85, Esther is frantically trying to avoid going to "Bingoville" at her daughter's insistence by adhering to a daily routine and her friend Lorraine's help. As the reader spends time with Esther, we learn about her life -- the joys, the sorrows, and her many, many opinions. A great character study!
July 26, 2022
Being Esther is about a woman not willing to give up her independence. The book is told with flash backs to earlier periods and it makes it quite interesting as you slowly begin to learn about Esther. The family is quite complicated as families usually are. Esther comes across as a strong woman who has managed to stay independent despite an overbearing husband and the time period. The author is not verbose but packs a lot into each sentence. I really enjoyed tge book.
February 6, 2018
Growing old
Esther is an old woman who still wants her independence. She never pushes anyone or anything, and is lonely after her husband dies. She makes peace with her life and death.
Esther is an old woman who still wants her independence. She never pushes anyone or anything, and is lonely after her husband dies. She makes peace with her life and death.
April 13, 2018
This was a wonderful character study about an 85 year olds last few months of life. I really enjoyed getting to know Esther and her family and her thoughts about living and life. It's a sweet story really. Beautifully written.
September 29, 2019
Enjoyed this book tremendously! It takes place in the exact neighborhood I grew up in - and offers such fun connections to my personal experiences.
It’s a wonderful insight into life as an aging widow who works to come to terms with the meaning of her current life.
It’s a wonderful insight into life as an aging widow who works to come to terms with the meaning of her current life.
May 9, 2017
Ratings (1 to 5)
Writing: 4.5
Plot: 4
Characters: 4
Emotional impact: 5
Overall rating: 4.375
Writing: 4.5
Plot: 4
Characters: 4
Emotional impact: 5
Overall rating: 4.375
June 21, 2018
A witty, bittersweet tale of being old. It hits home.
Reminds me of Stewart O'Nan's "Emily, Alone" and just as good.
Reminds me of Stewart O'Nan's "Emily, Alone" and just as good.
November 16, 2018
Charming and delightful!
July 8, 2020
Hard to get into, but Esther grows on you. Not a re-read for me, though story is credible and gets more interesting in second half.
November 22, 2022
What is the world like when you are 85 year old Esther Lustig. This book answers that in a very real and engaging way.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 121 reviews