The Family Markowitz

by Allegra Goodman, Jane Hamilton (introduction)

" The Family Markowitz is one of the most astute and engaging books about American family life to have come our way in quite a while." --Linda Matchan, Boston Globe

In The Family Markowitz , Allegra Goodman writes with wit and compassion of three generations of Markowitzes making their way in America. At the center is Rose, the cantankerous matriarch, who longs for her earlier life in London and Vienna but is now forced into dependency on her sons Ed, an academic expert on terrorism (ahead of his time!), and Henry, an artistic expatriate with a taste for antiques and postmodern poetry. Also in the family circle are Sarah, Ed's wife, who teaches creative writing and longs for a more literary life, and Sarah and Ed's daughter Miriam, a medical student who causes great alarm in her largely assimilated family by rediscovering Judaism.

Through her sharp-eyed observations of weddings, hospital vigils, holiday dinners, and other rituals of family life, Goodman writes about the Markowitzes from the inside, bringing each character to life.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Jewish, Judaica, Novels, Adult Fiction, Judaism

280 pages, Paperback

First published August 22, 1996

About the author

Hello, Good Readers!

My new book "This Is Not About Us" will be published in February! You can order it here.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...

My novel "Isola" is now in paperback. This is a historical novel based on the true story of a young woman who sails from France to the New World in 1542 and is marooned on an island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.

I am also the author of several other books including, "Sam," a novel about a young girl's exuberance, wonder, and ambition as she comes of age.

Jenna Bush Hager picked "Sam" for her Today Show book club and said, "Sam is about as perfect of a coming-of-age story as I have ever read."

About me: I was born in Brooklyn, but I grew up in Honolulu where I did not have to wear shoes in school until fifth grade.

I now live in Cambridge, MA and I own boots. In addition to writing fiction, I read a lot and teach on occasion. In my free time, I swim and walk around the city.

I have four children, now getting pretty grown up. My oldest son (an economist) reads everything. My second son (a law student and grad student in political theory) reads mostly non-fiction. I'm working on this! My third son (an aspiring chemist) loves science fiction, fantasy, and history. My daughter (a user experience designer) enjoys biography and YA novels--but only if they have exceptionally beautiful covers.

I read fiction, biography, history, poetry, and books about art. I also enjoy discovering authors in translation.

When I was a seven-year-old living in Hawaii, I decided to become a novelist--but I began by writing poetry and short stories.

In high school and college I focused on short stories, and in June, 1986, I published my first in "Commentary."

My first book was a collection of short stories, "Total Immersion."

My second book, "The Family Markowitz" is a short story cycle that people tend to read as a novel.

Much of my work is about family in its many forms. I am also interested in religion, science, the threats and opportunities of technology, and the exploration of islands, real, and imaginary.

My novel, "Kaaterskill Falls" travels with a group of observant Jews to the Catskill Mountains.

"Intuition" enters a research a lab, where a young post-doc makes a discovery that excites everybody except for one skeptic--his ex-girlfriend.

A rare collection of cookbooks stars in my novel, "The Cookbook Collector."

A girl named Honor tries to save her mother in my dystopian YA novel, "The Other Side of the Island."

With Michael Prince, I have co-authored a supercool writing textbook. If you teach composition, take a look at "Speaking of Writing: a Brief Rhetoric."

If you'd like to learn more about me and about each of my books, check out my website:

http://allegragoodman.com/

Find me on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/AllegraGoodman

Or on Instagram:

@allegragoodmanwriter

And of course, you can check out the reviews I post here on Goodreads. Generally, I use my Goodreads reviews to spotlight books I love and recommend.

Reviews

[Sierra · Rating 3 out of 5]

if you liked allegra’s book sam, you’ll probably like this book too

[Miranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like I know this family well now, with all their quirks.

[Notcathy J · Rating 1 out of 5]

"As short stories, boring; as a novel, pointless."

[Janine Corman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allegra Goodman is a great writer. I enjoyed getting to know the Family Markowitz. I went out of my way to buy a second copy of the book when I lost the first one, only 2/3 through. That has to say something. I loved the characters and I feel like I learned a lot about Jewish history, Jewish culture, and Jewish faith.

My only issue, and it's not a small one, is that the stories neither stood alone well, nor did they make a complete novel. I had so many unanswered questions, most notably, the content of Ben Markowitz's dissertation. His widowed wife, Rose, never got around to translating it, but in the first story she bequeaths it to her daughter-in-law, Sarah. I thought for sure the book would circle back around, ending with Sarah examining the dissertation. I was hoping to learn something about Ben Markowitz, and perhaps get a better understanding of the family that Ed and Henry Markowitz grew into. Nope. It was never addressed again. There were great stories about both sons and their myriad anxieties, as well as Sarah and Ed's critical orthodox Jewish daughter, Miriam. There was even a not so great story about an obnoxious writer/historian who is only loosely connected to Rose Markowitz.

Again, Goodman is a great writer. She was able to make this directionless collection of stories a good read and (but?) she left me wanting more.

[Jennifer S. Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this is a collection of short stories, they all revolve around one family, over the course of about fifteen years, giving the book much more of a novel feel. In fact, while many of the stories were strong in and of themselves, there were a few that I didn't feel stood up on their own. Because the stories were so heavily linked, though, it made me read the book as a novel, and as such, I wanted more from the characters.

The heart of the stories is the Rose Markowitz, the elderly mother of Ed and Henry who buries her second husband. Her character never came to life for me--even though she has her own story, I felt I never understood her or her motivations; every now and then I'd get a glimpse of her beyond the surface, but her character did nothing but stress me out.

The stories that interested me the most involved the younger generation: the daughter-in-law who never had the Woolfian room of her own; the granddaughter who turned Orthodox to the disbelief of her parents; the son who belongs to another era (although I was confused about the sudden about face on his sexuality).

As in Kaaterskill Falls, the writing here is beautiful, but it's obvious this is an earlier work; it just doesn't hold together as well.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a set of short stories that focus on the Markowitz family: matriarch Rose, who loses her husband and worries her children with her Percocet addiction; her son Henry, who puts aesthetics before his sexual preferences; her other son, Ed, who is in constant simmering crisis about his career and about shifting relationships as his children grow up and he becomes his mother’s caretaker; and Ed’s long-suffering wife, Sarah. The stories cover milestone events in their lives, but Goodman focuses on the small moments more than the large as the main characters spar with each other, so there’s a sense of individual tableaux rather than narrative movement.

[HeavyReader · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story of a family—elderly mother, two grown brothers, and their wives and children—is told through a series of short stories. Each story stands alone and also ties together all the others.

There’s a lot of whining in these stories, and nothing much happens, not a lot of action here. I think this book, like most books about families, is about growing up, growing old, having relationships with people we choose (like husbands and wives) and with people we end up with by chance (in-laws, children, siblings).

It was a nice enough book, but it didn’t leave me excited in any way.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Three generations of Jewish family-satirical humor, uneven quality which varies from engaging to boring.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because I had admired Kaaterskill Falls, and I found this book to be an absorbing story. On the surface, it can be read as a novel in stories or as a series of interconnected stories about the members of one family. Most of the events are fairly commonplace - the death of an elderly husband, a move to a new home, career issues, a wedding. The characters are interesting and the writing superb. But what struck me as I worked my way through the book was how the author was using the Markowitz family to tell the story of Jewish people in the United States and throughout the world.

One of the themes throughout the book is that of displacement. Rose, the oldest member of the family, traveled from Vienna to England as a child, and subsequently to America, living first in a Jewish community in New York and then in California and the Washington, D.C. area. Her children are also wanderers. Henry tells his wife that he had never felt at home anywhere before moving to England. Rose’s granddaughter Miriam is searching for a home as well, eventually seeking refuge in the Orthodox Judaism that her parents have rejected.

Miriam’s story is part of the theme of looking for one’s place in the world, which again runs throughout the book. It is part of Henry’s story, as well as that of Edward and Sarah. I thought that the character of Sarah was the emotional center of the book, as Elizabeth was in Kaaterskill Falls. She is the one who holds the family together, while dealing with her own disappointments, particularly in connection with her ambitions as a writer.

I thought that resilience was a big part of the story. Rose has clearly had a hard life, but refuses to see it that way. Others in the family change course when required to by their circumstances.

And finally, there was the yearning to be part of a close Jewish community. We get a glimpse of that at the beginning with Rose in her New York apartment and it seems to be a big part of Miriam’s search. But she always had her family and the beautiful portrayal of a warm family is what really made this book special for me.

Allegra Goodman is an amazing writer and should be widely read.

[Mickey Weinstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good family story and American Jews of a certain age may identify. However, the characters were to a degree rather stereotyped. The typical kvetchy, passive-aggressive drama queen matriarch with Percocet addiction as a twist, the typical sibling rivalry between the scholarly, materialistic academic liberal activist apparently addicted to chaos with the hair trigger temper and the artsy Anglophile anachronistic aesthete with possibly confused sexual orientation (but he marries a Gentile he meets at Oxford with their common interest in home decorating and antiquities), the long suffering repressed wife of the academic, the horror at the granddaughter who turns Orthodox (with only a superficial explanation of what may have caused her decision and zero development of the character she marries), the slacker grandson, the entirely predictable dysfunction when they all come together for the granddaughter's wedding, complete with resentment and barely disguised hostility at the in-laws. I guess it's realistic but they all seemed in some degree obnoxious and grating. Perhaps that was the point.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful collection of intertwined stories of three generations of a Jewish family, matriarch Rose, her two sons, Ed and Henry, who have to decide where she's going to live, their wives and children. Lots of familiar dialogues -- the tsuris and the naches, it's all there. Sarah, one of the daughters-in-law teaches creative writing workshops at a senior center and the experiences, stories and critiques are spot-on. I could have sworn she was writing about my workshops! Some scenes -- like the wedding of Miriam and Jon, where father Henry, a professor of Middle East studies, has to deal with his future father-in-law Zaev, who has just published a LTE in the NYT about all the dangers Israel faces -- are both complex and laugh-out-loud funny! Great train reading.

[Michael Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Serious and funny by turns, this is yet one more of those novels composed of short stories, my favorite type of reading these days. Although the first story is about Rose, the matriarch, and she keeps popping up, most of the book is about her son Ed and his wife Sarah. There is also the effete son Henry and his wife Susan, but they live in England, and so are spared most of the burden of taking care of feisty old mom, Rose. There are grandchildren and Miriam, the traditionalst, who's getting married, is a standout. The most side-splitting episode is the Canterbury Tales play-off. You'll know it when you get there. And for some reason, when this line is delivered late in the game, “Yeah, I don’t think we need that,” It cracked me up. Super-highly recommended.

[Carolinecarver · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Allegra Goodman’s writing, the way she captures her characters’ idiosyncratic speech, mannerisms and humanity. These are wonderful stories, but they are not exactly stand-alone short stories, nor are they a novel, although they connect through time and place one large, bickering but loving Jewish family. I do wish Goodman had turned this into a novel because she left unfinished a number of loose ends. I’ll never know, for instance, what happens to the Hebrew manuscript left unfinished in Rose’s desk. Why were Miriam and her fiancé turning toward orthodoxy with such determination? Neither of them were raised that way. I was sad when the book ended but ultimately unsatisfied which is why I gave it three stars instead of four.

[Betsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Jewish family story. I like family stories. This family felt familiar, as if I could have known them. The bickering, the manipulation, the pushing away and the coming back together. The copyright on this book is 1996. There’s no internet, no email, no cell phones. It’s the old days. The book covers a span of at least twenty years and in general each chapter jumps forward in time. There’s some discussion about Israel and peace in the Mideast and interestingly it’s a conversation that could have been held today. There’s humor and warmth in the book.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a surprisingly good work of fiction (surprising because I'd never heard of it/the author; I found it in a neighborhood borrow library) that tells the story of a family over decades and through varied perspectives. This trope of the plot is in no way new, and there isn't a whole lot of daring plot devices, but Goodman's sharp, clean prose and "literary" chic tells a good story with strong characters.

[Sandy Brusin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't remember the last time I laughed out loud while reading a book, but this jewel about a quirky Jewish family really tickled me. I don't know how I missed this one when it was published in 1996, but I'm glad a friend recommended it to me recently. I swear I know Mrs Markowitz. She is sooo real.

[Shari (Shira) · Rating 3 out of 5]

It started out slow, but I am glad that I hung in there. It would have been a book that I would have attempted to abandon, but it was a book club book. It is a collection of short stories about the Markowitz family, grandmother Rose, sons Ed and Henry, and Ed's children. Goodman did a great job of capturing the tone of family interactions. Some of the conversations sounded eerily familiar.

[John Newcomb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is really a selection of short stories with repeated character being the delightful, charming , irritating, frustrating, intelligent and foolish Family members of the Markowitz clan. I thoroughly enjoyed the stories and they are so well written you become very much engaged with these very human people.

[Eve Berman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book. It felt to me like a time capsule of Jewish life in the 80s and 90s, before being gay was socially acceptable (as Henry really seemed to be), computers or cell phones existed, and Israeli politics became so toxic. I'm somewhere between a three and a four. You do get to know each member of the family over the course of the novel.

[Sonia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these interlinking short stories hit, and many of them did not. I wanted to feel more connected to the stories, and wanted to learn more about specific aspects of the family dynmaics and indivual characters.

Her dialogue where multiple people are talking past eachother was done well in some of the stories, but not in others.

The mosquito chapter was way too long.

[Abby]

I think Allegra Goodman writes really well, and I enjoyed the fast paced drama of the first chapter of this book (which prompted me to buy it), but several more chapters in it seemed to lose momentum (at least for me...). Had other things that were calling from my shelf, so decided to let this one go.

[Toni Chanakas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting story about a family that has its quirks. I’m reminded of my mother and our holiday traditions. I learned a lot about being Jewish and how the Seder is conducted in the chapter, “The Four Questions.” I really liked the Rose character- I think everyone has a relative like her- I definitely do.

[Hilary Marcus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little too familiar to this reader! I appreciated how time passed between chapters, and the way the characters were revealed over the span of the story. Not the most compelling read, but a glimpse into one family's tribulations.

[Abigail Pickus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read a few books by Allegra Goodman but don't think I ever read this before, and I'm glad I did. It was really outstanding. I loved every single sentence. I also felt like I could know these people. A hundred million stars.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

[Susan Beecher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable novel about a Jewish family with interesting members. Well-written.

[Rebecca Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a nice novel about a family told through a series of short stories. I loved the family and I loved short story format. It was well written.

[Bsldavio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fiction

[Mindi Lutwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book did not flow and was pretty boring

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars
Humorous -- lots of dysfunction.