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Swell
Thirty years after From Rockaway ("A great first novel" --Harper's Bazaar), Jill Eisenstadt returns with a darkly funny new work of fiction that exposes a city and a family at their most vulnerable.
When Sue Glassman's family needs a new home, Sue relents, after years of resisting, and agrees to convert to Judaism. In return, Sue's father-in-law, Sy, buys the family--Sue, Dan, and their two daughters--a capacious but ramshackle beachfront house in Rockaway, Queens, a world away from the Glassmans' cramped Tribeca apartment. The catch? Sy is moving in, too. And the house is haunted.
On the weekend of Sue's conversion party, ninety-year-old Rose, who (literally) got away with murder on the premises years earlier, shows up uninvited. Towing a suitcase-sized pocketbook, having escaped an assisted living facility in Forest Hills, Rose seems intent on moving back in. Enter neighbor Tim--formerly Timmy (see From Rockaway), a former lifeguard, former firefighter, and reformed alcoholic--who feels, for reasons even he can't explain, inordinately protective of the Glassmans.
The collective nervous breakdown occasioned by Rose's return swells to operatic heights in a novel that charms and surprises on every page as it unflinchingly addresses the perils of living in a world rife with uncertainty.
When Sue Glassman's family needs a new home, Sue relents, after years of resisting, and agrees to convert to Judaism. In return, Sue's father-in-law, Sy, buys the family--Sue, Dan, and their two daughters--a capacious but ramshackle beachfront house in Rockaway, Queens, a world away from the Glassmans' cramped Tribeca apartment. The catch? Sy is moving in, too. And the house is haunted.
On the weekend of Sue's conversion party, ninety-year-old Rose, who (literally) got away with murder on the premises years earlier, shows up uninvited. Towing a suitcase-sized pocketbook, having escaped an assisted living facility in Forest Hills, Rose seems intent on moving back in. Enter neighbor Tim--formerly Timmy (see From Rockaway), a former lifeguard, former firefighter, and reformed alcoholic--who feels, for reasons even he can't explain, inordinately protective of the Glassmans.
The collective nervous breakdown occasioned by Rose's return swells to operatic heights in a novel that charms and surprises on every page as it unflinchingly addresses the perils of living in a world rife with uncertainty.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published June 6, 2017
53 people are currently reading
1117 people want to read
About the author
Jill Eisenstadt
9 books72 followersJill Eisenstadt was raised in Rockaway, New York. She was educated at Bennington College and Columbia University. She lives in Brooklyn.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
June 21, 2024
For a book that took place over a short time span, it seemed like a very long journey. I wanted to like this book, but found it difficult to like, dislike or connect with the characters.
October 4, 2017
Swell was an easy read. It's the book you want to bring to a beach with you to read while drinking a margarita.
As I just tried writing a synopsis of the plot, I realized there is not much more to the story than the summary written on the front flap. The storyline had me captivated for the most part- it followed the Glassmans, an old lady Rose, and the next door neighbor firefighter Tim. The reason for the low rating is that every plotline in the book has a boring, confusing ending. It was as if Jill Eisenstadt had an hour to write off the characters' stories and she panicked, wrote very undetailed and vague resolutions, and called it a book.
I was disappointed because Swell sounded promising and funny. It came up short.
As I just tried writing a synopsis of the plot, I realized there is not much more to the story than the summary written on the front flap. The storyline had me captivated for the most part- it followed the Glassmans, an old lady Rose, and the next door neighbor firefighter Tim. The reason for the low rating is that every plotline in the book has a boring, confusing ending. It was as if Jill Eisenstadt had an hour to write off the characters' stories and she panicked, wrote very undetailed and vague resolutions, and called it a book.
I was disappointed because Swell sounded promising and funny. It came up short.
July 6, 2022
I had a Swell time reading this strange and spooky tale and returning to Eisenstadt’s quirky From Rockaway and their ensemble of characters. I’m just not so sure if I shall ever return again.
May 10, 2018
Swell is a beach read, a Rockaway tale featuring a newcomer family crashing into the turf of surfers, chinese refugees, and post- 9/11 firemen, locals you recognize, and Rose who is unique in contemporary fiction. Nobody like Rose. I found the first chapter to be the smartest, best, and most skillful writing I’ve read in the last decade, its themes of safety, place and heart expand with the novel. Virginia Woolf in a bikini Proust in board shorts, both with sunburned noses, how I would describe the prose. Jill Eisenstadt is the best of her generation.
May 28, 2018
This was 100 percent my favorite book of the year. Real characters. Hilarious but puts you in your feelings. I would give this as a present to someone I love.
July 28, 2020
I picked this title and book for our book club, thinking it sounded quirky, but it could be humorous. I almost stopped reading it after twenty pages, but I decided to keep reading it because it has to get better. I was terribly mistaken! It did not get better, and after finishing it, I was left with one key thought: what was the author trying to convey? My answer, was simply: I have no reasonable idea what the book was about. Yes, the world is a terrible place at times, and people have a need for an explanation sometimes as to why bad things happen. The book had absurd characters, and sometime too many of them, but few of them were people you might care to know.
My final take: I wasted my time reading this book, and the one redeeming item is I will now have a new disaster of a book to refer back to, when I encounter other bad books in the future.
My final take: I wasted my time reading this book, and the one redeeming item is I will now have a new disaster of a book to refer back to, when I encounter other bad books in the future.
July 14, 2017
Listened to the audio book. Generally meh.
August 2, 2017
this was not swell. (sorry! though there are good plays on the word in this book.) while reading, this story felt very bogged down, and it dragged for me. i feel like the author just tried to do too much and it didn't all come together well. there wasn't much that i enjoyed here, though eisenstadt's writing was fine.
August 21, 2017
Nope. Wasn't a fan of the writing style, it read very choppy to me. Did not finish and based on the other reviews (that I just read now) seems like cutting this book loose was a good decision. A shame too since I love surfing and it's based nearby in NY, thought would have been a sure win.
March 19, 2018
I’m surprised this book gets such low stars here. I thought it was funny and quick moving. There isn’t a lot of plot but the writing was very good and it was generally very amusing.
July 20, 2025
An example of the marriage of form and narrative. Save for a prologue 8 years before, the entirety of SWELL passes over the course of a single weekend, the text flowing between several points of view. The claustrophobia of the text reflects the claustrophobia that Sue — extremely pregnant, having agreed to convert to Judaism to appease her nightmarish father-in-law, and feeling trapped in a house she didn’t want to buy, and which has a dark, almost mythically gothic history — feels.
Though not a sequel, readers of Eisenstadt’s first novel, FROM ROCKAWAY, will enjoy the flickers of remembered characters, revisited in person and in memory. I love the feeling of the inhabited Eisenstadt world of Rockaway, knowing these same figures’ stories have continued in the intervening 20-odd years between the two novels. Better than a direct sequel, honestly!
Though not a sequel, readers of Eisenstadt’s first novel, FROM ROCKAWAY, will enjoy the flickers of remembered characters, revisited in person and in memory. I love the feeling of the inhabited Eisenstadt world of Rockaway, knowing these same figures’ stories have continued in the intervening 20-odd years between the two novels. Better than a direct sequel, honestly!
July 6, 2017
Half the book was enough for me. The quirky characters were the only thing getting me that far. Pretty pointless and disappointing.
June 11, 2017
What does the word "swell" mean? It can refer to an increase in an ocean wave as it comes in towards the shore. Or to the lines of a pregnant woman's belly as she nears the end of her term. At its simplest, it can just connote an increase in pride, love, or another feeling. I thought of all these meanings as I read Jill Eisenstadt's newest novel, "Swell". Set in Rockaway, New York, it's a sequel of sorts of her first novel, "From Rockaway", which I haven't read. The two books share many of the same characters; surfers and townies from the first book, who have aged into firefighters in the second book. Eisenstadt adds to the characters in the book by bringing the novel up to June, 2002.
Times were tough in Rockaway in June, 2002. The area, which is a peninsula off the shore of the borough of Queens, Seventy or so Rockaway residents were killed in the attacks of 9/11; mostly firefighters sent to the Twin Towers and who were trapped when the buildings collapsed. Many of their bodies were never found in the rubble. How do you mourn without a body, without tangible evidence of death? Two months later, an American Airlines flight crashed there after take-off. There were many casualties, both from the plane and on the ground. Ten or so years earlier, a freighter carrying Chinese refugees sunk in the waters off the Rockaway shore. All these tragic events were to affect the characters of Eisenstadt's novel.
In addition to the characters brought from "From Rockaway", Eisenstadt gives the reader the Glassman family. Husband Dan, wife Sue, and their two daughters had moved to Rockaway from their apartment near Ground Zero. Dan's father, Sy, had promised his son and wife a house by the shore if Sue converted to Judaism. The house the family moved into, however, was, to say the least, not what they thought it would or should be. Called “The Murder House”, a killing had occurred at the time of the freighter sinking. Now, 10 years later, the characters – surfers and firefighters – meet the Glassmans in a funny, yet tender, story of how the passage of time dulls the pains of the past, even while facing the pains of today’s world. It’s a “swell” book, full of humor and pathos. I’ll go back and read her first book, “From Rockaway”.
Times were tough in Rockaway in June, 2002. The area, which is a peninsula off the shore of the borough of Queens, Seventy or so Rockaway residents were killed in the attacks of 9/11; mostly firefighters sent to the Twin Towers and who were trapped when the buildings collapsed. Many of their bodies were never found in the rubble. How do you mourn without a body, without tangible evidence of death? Two months later, an American Airlines flight crashed there after take-off. There were many casualties, both from the plane and on the ground. Ten or so years earlier, a freighter carrying Chinese refugees sunk in the waters off the Rockaway shore. All these tragic events were to affect the characters of Eisenstadt's novel.
In addition to the characters brought from "From Rockaway", Eisenstadt gives the reader the Glassman family. Husband Dan, wife Sue, and their two daughters had moved to Rockaway from their apartment near Ground Zero. Dan's father, Sy, had promised his son and wife a house by the shore if Sue converted to Judaism. The house the family moved into, however, was, to say the least, not what they thought it would or should be. Called “The Murder House”, a killing had occurred at the time of the freighter sinking. Now, 10 years later, the characters – surfers and firefighters – meet the Glassmans in a funny, yet tender, story of how the passage of time dulls the pains of the past, even while facing the pains of today’s world. It’s a “swell” book, full of humor and pathos. I’ll go back and read her first book, “From Rockaway”.
June 7, 2018
I had a good time reading this book. Many of the characters initially turned me off, but I liked them better and better as I got to know them. I grew to like the loud-mouthed teen, the very pregnant mom, the batty old lady, and the nosy neighbor. The author did a great job making these folks seem real.
The story made me think about the nature of change, as most of the characters experienced some sort of major change in the few days covered by the book.
I recommend this book for its strong character development and sense of place and time.
The story made me think about the nature of change, as most of the characters experienced some sort of major change in the few days covered by the book.
I recommend this book for its strong character development and sense of place and time.
June 12, 2018
Swell radiates wisdom and understanding. Eisenstadt artfully weaves big topics such as religion, historical and local trauma on a community, family, motherhood, marriage and much more in this beautiful novel. You could read this book 1000 times over and still find something new in it. Some bit of insight to carry with you on good and bad days. Buy this book. Gift it. Buy it again. Leave one on your coffee table. Put one in your tote to bring with you to the beach. Ride the subway w/ this stunner. You'll be happy you did.
August 30, 2017
I think the story got off to a great start and there were some interesting twists along the way. I can see this being made into a movie. It's both funny and dark with lots of characters who are characters. There are a number of open-ended plot lines that left me wanting to know a little more but, except for the exposition, the story takes place over three days and probably couldn't go on much further.
March 12, 2025
If you like the brat pack and nostalgia, you need to read this. The moment where Timmy saves the little girl from drowning is such an amazing pay-off for a book that came out 40 years ago. It's literally that moment from Spider-Man but not a contrived dumb multiverse moment. I dislike review apps because so many people can never challenge or broaden their horizons!!! Anyways, great book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 13, 2017
Hated everything about this book except the cover and how short it was. Maybe the author was trying to be darkly comedic, but I don't see anything funny about misogyny, sexual harassment, or sexual assault. And if she wasn't trying to be funny, then I don't know what she was trying to do.
October 2, 2017
Either I'm in a bad mood or this is a total load of rubbish. Or both.
March 19, 2021
I purchased this read at the dollar store. I enjoyed it, it was funny and had so many neat character perspectives. So I looked up the book that came before it and paid 16.95 for that one.
December 23, 2018
Like my last fiction read this one wasn't as good as I hoped it would be, though technically I liked it better. We are following way too many storylines for starters: a prologue where Rose saves an illegal immigrant and commits a more serious crime, the Glassmans moving into her house 9 years later after her daughter-in-law and others trick her out of it, Sue's conversion and pregnancy angst, her daughter's teenage exploits trying to make a name for herself with the locals, and neighbor Tim reeling from past events.
Beyond having too many focuses, I don't think that Eisenstadt set the scene of her transitions very well. To be fair, I seem to have forgotten a lot of real (if local to an area I don't know very well) history from the Golden Venture illegal alien smuggle of 1993 to the Flight 587 plane crash in November 2001 (I guess that got swallowed up by 9/11 in my head!) On a lighter note, I had an immediate affinity for June and her friends listening to Pink's "Get This Party Started," seeing as we're in the same age group. :P
This book came onto my radar because it deals with interfaith Jewish themes, but the story around Rose and Tim that started in the '90s is much more interesting. It deals with what seems to be dementia, family schisms, reactions to larger world events, long-buried secrets, attempting to "grow up" despite a stagnant friend group...that's quite enough without dragging the Glassmans into it! I also wasn't into the conversion storyline, which felt quirky and melodramatic rather than based in reality. I guess this is all the more incentive for me to think up and tell my amorphous novel on an interfaith Jewish family. :P
Still, I thought the writing was decent and engaging once I got into every scene. Or maybe I'm just feeling the holiday spirit, but I'm giving this one a 3.5. Not all that memorable, but not a horrible way to spend a few days, either. At least it was an easy read to pick up around being busy at work. :P And it reminds me how compelling it is to set a story around a specific time and place (Rockaway, NY, 1993 and 2002). Even if Eisenstadt herself could have done a better job in that regard. Oh well.
Beyond having too many focuses, I don't think that Eisenstadt set the scene of her transitions very well. To be fair, I seem to have forgotten a lot of real (if local to an area I don't know very well) history from the Golden Venture illegal alien smuggle of 1993 to the Flight 587 plane crash in November 2001 (I guess that got swallowed up by 9/11 in my head!) On a lighter note, I had an immediate affinity for June and her friends listening to Pink's "Get This Party Started," seeing as we're in the same age group. :P
This book came onto my radar because it deals with interfaith Jewish themes, but the story around Rose and Tim that started in the '90s is much more interesting. It deals with what seems to be dementia, family schisms, reactions to larger world events, long-buried secrets, attempting to "grow up" despite a stagnant friend group...that's quite enough without dragging the Glassmans into it! I also wasn't into the conversion storyline, which felt quirky and melodramatic rather than based in reality. I guess this is all the more incentive for me to think up and tell my amorphous novel on an interfaith Jewish family. :P
Still, I thought the writing was decent and engaging once I got into every scene. Or maybe I'm just feeling the holiday spirit, but I'm giving this one a 3.5. Not all that memorable, but not a horrible way to spend a few days, either. At least it was an easy read to pick up around being busy at work. :P And it reminds me how compelling it is to set a story around a specific time and place (Rockaway, NY, 1993 and 2002). Even if Eisenstadt herself could have done a better job in that regard. Oh well.
September 18, 2017
I found the idea of binding together the peninsula's biggest and saddest national news stories--The Golden Venture, 9/11, the crash of Flight 587--together intriguing, and telling it all from the perspective of non-natives (in the form of the Glassmans) is a far more interesting take than having a bunch of people from Rockaway talking about Rockaway. But I think the author's decision to incorporate characters from her 1987 novel threw the entire book off balance. Just about every member of the old lifeguard shack crew made an appearance--seemingly without having matured in even the most rudimentary of ways since we left them off. Their presence here is distracting--they pull at the edges of the story and drag the whole thing down. A tighter focus on the relationships among the Glassmans, the decisions/circumstances that brought them to Rockaway, and the story of the "murder house" would have made for a far better story.
The descriptions of post-9/11 Rockaway felt out of touch, too. The air in Belle Harbor was so thick with sadness during that first year or two, it was as though every member of the community was either being crushed under the burden of grief, or walking on eggshells around someone who was more directly suffering from it. None of the local characters felt real. Do lifeguards really still think of themselves as lifeguards ten years after they stop being lifeguards? Did teenagers really make 9/11 jokes just months after the attacks, while their friends' parents were waiting for the remains of loved ones to come home, piece by piece, if at all? So much of it just rang false to me.
Overall, I think Eisenstadt had the bones of a good story here, but failed to step back and edit it down to essentials.
The descriptions of post-9/11 Rockaway felt out of touch, too. The air in Belle Harbor was so thick with sadness during that first year or two, it was as though every member of the community was either being crushed under the burden of grief, or walking on eggshells around someone who was more directly suffering from it. None of the local characters felt real. Do lifeguards really still think of themselves as lifeguards ten years after they stop being lifeguards? Did teenagers really make 9/11 jokes just months after the attacks, while their friends' parents were waiting for the remains of loved ones to come home, piece by piece, if at all? So much of it just rang false to me.
Overall, I think Eisenstadt had the bones of a good story here, but failed to step back and edit it down to essentials.
July 22, 2017
I listened to a great interview with Jill Eisenstadt and rushed to grab this book. Despite the critical acclaim "Swell" received, I was just moderately interested in the characters and the plot, which was too bad, since the themes indicated such potential.
The main character, Sue Glassman, feels she's been strong-armed into converting to Judaism by her father-in-law in order to inherit his recently-acquired beach home. At the end of her 3rd trimester with her 3rd child, she is the very symbol of fertility in this beach community full of ghosts, death, and regret. When 80-year-old Rose, the home's former owner who shot her own son and has been unlawfully swindled out of her home (now owned by the Glassmans) returns to her homestead, each of the Glassmans is forced to faced her - and themselves - and each other - with more honesty and forgiveness than seems possible in such a domestically toxic environment.
I think maybe Eisenstadt bit off more than she could chew with this story. The characters - all of them - were less developed and less compelling than they might have been, and the post 9/11 setting felt less powerful than it might have been.
The main character, Sue Glassman, feels she's been strong-armed into converting to Judaism by her father-in-law in order to inherit his recently-acquired beach home. At the end of her 3rd trimester with her 3rd child, she is the very symbol of fertility in this beach community full of ghosts, death, and regret. When 80-year-old Rose, the home's former owner who shot her own son and has been unlawfully swindled out of her home (now owned by the Glassmans) returns to her homestead, each of the Glassmans is forced to faced her - and themselves - and each other - with more honesty and forgiveness than seems possible in such a domestically toxic environment.
I think maybe Eisenstadt bit off more than she could chew with this story. The characters - all of them - were less developed and less compelling than they might have been, and the post 9/11 setting felt less powerful than it might have been.
October 2, 2020
Thus book was painful to read (but I was prepared, by other reviews)! Knowingly, I persevered! I picked it only because it was about Rockaway, NY, a place with which I am painfully familiar!
So first, EVERY single character loathsome and despicable (which in itself does not make for an horrible read)!
Second, Ms. Eisenstadt’s writing style is migraine-producing! But, like my father used to say, “you get used to hanging if you hang long enough!” It switched from “stream of consciousness” to narrative and back again... sometimes in the present... sometimes not (which does make make for a horrible read)!
So first, EVERY single character loathsome and despicable (which in itself does not make for an horrible read)!
Second, Ms. Eisenstadt’s writing style is migraine-producing! But, like my father used to say, “you get used to hanging if you hang long enough!” It switched from “stream of consciousness” to narrative and back again... sometimes in the present... sometimes not (which does make make for a horrible read)!
January 19, 2024
2 stars
I really just did not enjoy this book. It felt like nothing really happened for the entire duration of the story. None of the various plot lines following any of the characters felt like they had any real weight to them, and even then they were all left with incredibly vague endings. The only thing I liked about this book was the style of the writing as a whole, it's just that the story itself had a lot of potential and it didn't live up to my expectations. An average read.
I really just did not enjoy this book. It felt like nothing really happened for the entire duration of the story. None of the various plot lines following any of the characters felt like they had any real weight to them, and even then they were all left with incredibly vague endings. The only thing I liked about this book was the style of the writing as a whole, it's just that the story itself had a lot of potential and it didn't live up to my expectations. An average read.
September 15, 2017
I found that this book just fell into a disjointed mess. Starting with the very strange encounter the daughter had on the beach with a boy she just met. It left me thinking, "What the hell was that?" Is the thought process the character had even close to realistic? From there it just fell apart. The conversations were shallow, pointless and disconnected. I couldn't take anymore, didn't finish.
August 13, 2017
It's rare for me to find a book as unlikable as I found this one. The characters were obnoxious, the plot nonexistent and forcing myself to finish it was a battle. I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and had it not been for that obligation I would not have bothered to finish it.
September 29, 2018
Hilarious characters. The heroine drags the leaves of her dining table out to the beach and burns them so she doesn't have to cook for so many relatives. However, I'm not sure the whole book hangs together all that well.
February 2, 2020
1.5 stars. This book has a fabulous cover and I genuinely liked some of the characters, but the story felt very disjointed and like I was peering through a fog. This would have been better if it focused on Tim and Peg. The Ruth parts were boring.
January 23, 2021
I tried to love this, I really did! But as you can see it took me over a month to read it 🙄🙄 It jumps around a lot, and doesn’t make much sense. The end is very abrupt and unfinished feeling. I didn’t love this book 😔
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews