Weekend

by Tania Grossinger, Andrew Neiderman

It all starts as a typical July Fourth weekend at the Congress, the internationally famous Catskill resort hotel. Thousands of vacationers, their pockets filled with cash and their minds on easy sex, begin to arrive from the city. But while the singles meet at the pool and other folks congregate at the bar, a time bomb is slowly an outbreak of cholera so devastating that the wildest holiday of the year quickly becomes a deadly nightmare.

Along the way we

*Ellen Golden, recently widowed owner of the Congress, who fights to rescue an old family tradition from the hands of organized crime,

*Sandy Golden, Ellen's thirteen-year-old daughter, who discovers her own budding sexuality in the midst of chaos,

*Dr. Sid Bronstein, the man who discovers the menace but keeps silent to save his own skin,

*Bruce Solomon, a young medical detective who is determined to find the cure at all costs,

* Fern Rosen, the shy "single" who captures Bruce's love--when he least expects it,

*Nick Martin, a smooth operator who wants to bring big-time gambling to the Congress, no matter what the opposition,

*Melinda Kaplan, the nymphomaniac divorcee, taking sex wherever she can find it, and

*Grace Kaplan, Melinda's disturbed son, acting out all of his adolescent fantasies.

A medical disaster as well as a love story, Weekend by Tania Grossinger and Andrew Neiderman is a Fourth of July no reader will ever forget.

394 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

I am the author of "Growing Up at Grossinger's" (Skyhorse Publishing, 2008), a memoir about my adventures growing up in the most famous celebrity oriented resort hotel in New York's Catskill Mountains and am currently promoting it via media and public appearances (see www.taniagrossinger.com)978 "

Reviews

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun and quick read during a power outage.

Set at a Borscht Belt resort in the Catskills in the late 1950s, it goes into the sexual peccadilloes and excesses that apparently happened at such resorts. The author would know, because she grew up as a member of the family that ran Grossinger's, the Catskills resort that was partial inspiration for Kellerman's in the movie "Dirty Dancing." Who knew that such resorts were considered "meat markets"? Ms. Grossinger did!

It was lurid and lascivious and a fun distraction as I waited for my power to be restored. Nothing particularly edifying but good, mindless fun.

[Kristi Lee]

DNF I don't know if I just wasn't in the mood for this but it didn't keep me engaged. I felt like some of the text was missing also. It would jump from scene to person and not sure where I was and who it was about.

[Fred Kuriger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to agree with the other reviewers, it was hard to put this book down! Although it was originally published in 1980 it seems fresh enough to have been written last week. I approached the book from two different directions. First, I love a good mystery and that's what the book description promised that it would be. Second, I am a big fan of the Catskills and I knew that anything written by Tania Grossinger would be genuine AND fascinating, since she did in fact "Grow up at Grossinger's." I've also read most of her published material (I would never say "I've read everything she's ever written" because that would not be true for any author!) and it was all excellent, especially "Growing Up at Grossinger's" and "Memoir of an Independent Woman." So, without repeating what everyone else has said, let me just say that it was a sparkling mystery that I literally could not put down until I finished it. Not only did have an intriguing plot, but the characters were all extremely well developed and I felt like I CARED about all of them, even if I didn't LIKE all of them. It reminded me somewhat of a disaster movie like Airport in that there were so many characters to keep track of, and they all had different and distinct characteristics. But they were fully developed and were not caricatures or stereotypes. As far as the Catskills setting goes, I have to repeat the term I used earlier, and that is GENUINE. I'm sure the resort, called the Congress in the book, was modeled significantly on Grossinger's, where Ms. Grossinger was raised, but I also know that she has enough of a broad perspective on the Catskill resort industry that she was able to draw on her knowledge of many other resorts and thus present the Congress as a composite. If you have any interest in Catskills history this book is a must, because it puts the reader right smack in the middle of a major Catskill resort, and you can just feel the grandeur of the physical setting and the many colorful characters that populated it. In addition, you got a real sense as to why the resort industry collapsed, given the daily operational and financial pressures that the hotel owners faced.
In summary, "Weekend" is probably not the great American novel, but it is a fascinating read that you do not want to miss.

[Martha Mendelsohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

What happens when a cholera outbreak hits a famous resort in the Catkskills over the Fourth of July in 1958 is the subject of a suspenseful, gripping page-turner you won’t be able to put down. Part thriller, part hilarious send-up, Grossinger and Neiderman bring together a full range of Borscht Belt denizens —sex-crazed matrons and their lecherous husbands, “singles” on the prowl, a beleaguered hotel owner and her inquisitive teenaged daughter, a disturbed 15-year-old and his rejecting mother, a hotel doc with exceptional bedside and diagnostic skills, a grandiose psychopath, and many more. A must!