The Wholeness of a Broken Heart

by Katie Singer

Narrated through the voices of four generations of Jewish women, The Wholeness of a Broken Heart recounts the story of a young woman's troubled relationship with her mother.

Growing up in Cleveland in the 1960s and 1970s, Hannah Felber basks in her mother's devotion to her, and for Celia, her daughter is her redemption from an unhappy childhood. But when Hannah goes off to college to begin a life of her own, her mother inexplicably shuts her out, refusing to answer her letters or phone calls." "With her mother's abrupt abandonment, Hannah loses not only her closest confidante, but also her sense of identity - she searches through old photographs and listens to family legends for clues to who she is and where she comes from. Drawn deeper and deeper into her family's past, she begins to see that the fate of her grandparents and those left in the old country has a direct bearing on her own life.

In chapters narrated by Hannah's maternal ancestors, we hear the voices and stories of those beyond, we hear the voices and stories of those beyond the grave.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Jewish, Literary Fiction, Family, Novels, Historical

435 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Emmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stumbled upon this book somewhat by mistake perusing the shelves at our local used book store, but let me tell you that I was utterly blown away by this novel. The emotional intensity across generations is astounding, and parts of this book literally had my hands shaking. Absolutely beautiful, and definitely should be considered a valuable addition to Holocaust literature.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gevonden in het boekenkarretje op het station: een goede vondst. De levens van vier generaties Joodse vrouwen zijn verweven in deze roman en dat heeft Katie Singer kunstig gedaan, maar ook heel natuurlijk en overtuigend.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Present tense got kind of annoying. I couldn't really sympathize with the characters.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book when it was first published, I read it again the following year and now I just reread passages. It is moving, it is tragic, it is raw and it is real. It predates the Holocaust and it brings us into current day. There isn't a sentimental phrase in this book, yet it is evokes emotion with every turn of the page. Grow up as a grand-daughter of survivors of the Pogroms and Holocaust. Grow up as the daughter of a mother whose own parents could barely make their way in America. I grieved for everything that had been lost by these four generations of women.

[Heather Olson Beal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book, although it took me a while to get in to it. Lots of characters. I kept forgetting who was who. Very rich history re: the Jewish immigrant experience. Interesting mother/daughter relationships. Neat Jewish sayings/proverbs.

[Alana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful story about mother-daughter relationships and being Jewish in post War US.

[Renee · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was okay. I almost dumped it halfway through but was curious to see what transpired in Hannah’s life, so pressed on. I was pleased to finish reading it but I didn’t enjoy it. It included some seriously screwed up women dumping their stuff on their daughters. It just didn’t do it for me.

[Martha]

This book is about several generations of [mostly:] the women of one family. I think what it does best is show how love and need and dependence and independence and resentment and support flow in different directions, through time and between different people... and how our understanding of each other is not necessarily helped by being present with a family member, nor is it hindered or stopped by losing a family member. I felt like a web was ever-growing as I read it, yet a small bright light was shining only in one place at a time as I read.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Because this is narrated by several generations of women, it's hard to keep them straight. I feel like Celia's character should have been more in depth, and I wish Hannah knew the truth about her mother's history
Why doesn't Ida tell her? Why doesn't Celia confront Ida? So many of these characters need therapy!. Their estrangement doesn't really make sense to me. There's an undertone of sadness throughout, but also one of love.

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a real gem, one of those $1 finds that seems like a gift. I love how the author used the previous generations to explain what brought mother and daughter to this place.

[Fara · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing book! Obviously this must be based on a semi autobiographical story told from the perspective of 4 generations of strong women. From the Shetl's of Europe to Cleveland, Boston and New York and the Beyond.

I was so immersed in the stories that someone like me that reads many books a week took 5 days to finish this. In part because the Yiddish expressions were written in a very poor transliteration. I myself would have preferred the expressions to be written in actual Yiddish, but that is a long lost language and few are left that actually can read it. I am so grateful to my own grandmother who taught me.

This is a universal story however, Italian, Irish, Middle Eastern, Asian, Most immigrants can tell the same kind of story in one form or another. I see she never wrote another novel after this, all her other books are non-fiction. A shame as she is a really good author except... I just kept wanting to take an editing pen to some of her over the top descriptions.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this at a used book sale & loved it. LOVED. I really became attached to the characters & I liked the different POV in each chapter (almost always the women in the family, btw.) A definite page-turner that I didn't want to put down; I read it in 3 days.

I can't give it 5 stars, mainly because of the whole Moe/Celia portion. Although I know that this is a reality in many families (hiding, not talking) it just didn't quite ring true in this family & this particular story - like, suddenly he's this way? And only with Celia? Who, as an adult, really never mentions it & continues to have a relationship with her parents? And never warns her daughter? I don't know, it just didn't fit IMO.

[Jen Mays · Rating 2 out of 5]

The nuances of the mother/daughter relationship are explored in this novel told through multi-generations of women in a single Jewish family. Ranging from pre-war Europe to America in the 90s, each woman unveils small bits of their lives and their thoughts as they navigate understanding what their place is in the universe.

On the surface, this seemed to be the type of book I would love: multi-generational and multi point of view, deeply emotional with interesting historical moments in time. However, for reasons I can't fully explain myself, this was a struggle to read. I stopped and restarted it several times, and even though I would be enjoying the story while in the act of reading it, weeks would go by in between reading sessions because I just wasn't excited to come back to it.

[Jennifer S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hannah and her mother, Celia, have a very close relationship - right up until her mother throws her out of the house without explanation at age 20. The rest of the book alternates between Hannah's trying to figure out what happened and how she can re-connect with her mother, and the voices of her mother, grandmother, great-grandmothers, and various other dead relations (mostly women). (Annoyingly, the older generations wrote in broken English, which I found unnecessary.)

The family tree in the front of the book is very helpful for trying to keep all the women straight.

That said, I found the pivotal relationship (and breakage) hard to believe.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved that the chapters were written from the point of view of the many women in the extended family - and that you can see the influence of these women on Hannah. The chapters are not written chronologically, which I’m not always crazy about, but it works well here as it allows the story to unfold gradually. (It was especially helpful that there was a family tree in the front of the book to help me keep everyone straight.).

The writing and characters are great. I think this would make for a great book group discussion.

[Rachel Berger · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate what the author was doing with this book. It was creative some of the viewpoints were a little confusing as far as the organization of varying people but I appreciate the interconnectedness. Some of the characters motivations I didn’t grasp, so I had no feelings towards a few of the people. It was good though!

[Shiela Abrigo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't like the book at first so I tossed it on the other side of the room. I finally continued reading it when the pandemic started and love the book this time. There are 4 narrators in the book and each came from different generation. What hooked me from reading this book is the character of Celia-mother of Hannah because she's so mysterious in a strange way lol.

[Mimi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four generations of amazing jewish mothers except the last one! A lot of great quotes in this book! I also had a great relationship with my grandmothers! But confusing at times, hard to remember each person!

[Em · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breathtaking, Poetic, Moving.

[Terry Waslow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I especially loved the voices of the older women. Very thoughtfully written.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting details on the lives of Jewish women over a few generations. Too much of one character, in my opinion. Good details, a little heavy emotionally.

[Vicki]

I liked how the story gave background on the various characters.

[Laura Evenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a good read. I liked the story.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was one of my D.I. finds so I didn't know anything about it before I started reading it. It didn't take very long for me to get sucked into this story of 4 generations of Jewish women. I loved it that their stories were told from their own perspective and that their relationships as mothers, daughters and granddaughters were so complex.

There were some uncomfortable issues in this book, but not enough that I didn't want to keep reading it.

"I saw you wanting to know and love the world beyond what Celia knew. I watched your mother give you room for that as much as she could; I saw you wanting more. More than she could make room for. I saw you wanting to use your heart. Which means, of course, it has to break open a lot.

Sometimes you get to know your heart by not using it. You, you were born wanting to use it--to a woman who spent her life trying not to. Think kindly on your mother: she was afraid that you might know, as she did, the feel of love gone sour." p. 398

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

The dance through the generations made me think of my own dance...I too have always been interested in the stories of my ancestors, piecing together tales of my own imagining from just a few scattered facts. I too always believe the dead to be with us, watching over, and I talk to them sometimes, though I have never heard their answers. Reading such scenarios seemed to feel like the verification of fact, though it was likely the author's imagining as much as my own. No matter. I relate too to the struggle of how to love across the generations when the roles change, and how and who to be in the world when the role you've built your life around is no longer there. I surely hope I do better than Celia, though I can't judge her too harshly, I've never carried the baggage she totes, yet still, she throws away what most of us would treasure....yet maybe she did do right by her daughter in the end. Clearly I don't know.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the main character a lot and was interested in her family's stories. She didn't seem to really have enough of an emotional wound from her mother's shutting her out, which was odd for a character who seemed relatively deep in other ways, especially since this relationship was the main point of the book. I think the author intended her to be upset, by but not showing how the break with her mother affected her other relationships, she made the character seem unaffected. Also, I expected there to be some big secret about the mother, and other than abuse which was revealed pretty early on, there wasn't, which meant the descriptions of the mother's difficult life stretched on for half the book with no suspense. I liked the writing style, which probably made the book seem a lot better than it was.

[Rilo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this story to be disturbing. It is a sensitive tale that takes place through generations told by the women and defined mostly by the relationships the women had with their mothers. The current day protagonist, Hannah, was adored by her mother, Celia, as a child and rejected when she became a young woman. She is on the journey of being a writer and the begins to discover the story behind her mother mostly through her Grandmother, Ida. We are taken through the harrowing events that occurred in Latvia and the story of how Leah made some horrific rapid decisions that seem to affect the following generations. I won't state why I was so disturbed by this story because it is a spoiler but I am interested in how my book club participants will discuss it tonight.

[Stacey D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Singer's great prose is the mainstay of this novel. The flashbacks into the world of four generations of women is riveting. Unfortunately, the contemporary story which is the crux of the novel, leaves one with lingering questions, mainly about the characters' self-awareness and awkward handling of their emotions. For such intelligent and sensitive women as Celia and Hannah are supposed to be, they do a poor job of rectifying their tenuous relationship and never acknowledge the root of each of their respective problems. Singer's accounts never offer hard-hitting emotions from either side. Because of this, the ending was somewhat unrealistic and disappointing to me.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just love multi-generational novels, particularly those about women. I also tend to like novels told from multiple perspectives. This fills the bill on both counts.

When Hannah's formerly adoring mother suddenly shuts her out, I am shocked. I am angry on Hannah's behalf. I am mystified. The rest of the story, and the differing viewpoints and experiences that are revealed, helps me to understand more. I still don't agree with what she did, but I can understand her better.

I love Hannah's grandmothers. Is there any hurt a loving grandmother can't help to heal?

[Shelie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book. Multiple generations of Jewish women telling their stories and about their relationships to each other. It was sad and some parts I just couldn't understand or relate to. I was frustrated at times and just wanted to yell "just say something!" I guess it is human nature to avoid unpleasantness. Overall, somewhat enjoyable in a slow and steady kind of way. It made me wish I could hear my mother's and grandmother's stories and that I would have asked more questions.