In Case We're Separated: Connected Stories

by Alice Mattison

Spanning the length and breadth of the twentieth century, Alice Mattison's masterful In Case We're Separated looks at a family of Jewish immigrants in the 1920s and 1930s and follows the urban, emotionally turbulent lives of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren against a backdrop of political assassination, the Vietnam War, and the AIDS epidemic. Beginning with the title story, which introduces Bobbie Kaplowitz—a single mother in 1954 Brooklyn whose lover is married and whose understanding of life is changed by a broken kitchen appliance—Mattison displays her unparalleled gift for storytelling and for creating rich, multidimensional characters, a gift that has led the Los Angeles Times to praise her as "a writer's writer."

In case we're separated --
Not yet, not yet --
I am not your mother --
In the dark, who pats the air --
Brooklyn Sestina --
Election day --
The bad Jew --
Future house --
Change --
Ms. Insight --
Boy in winter --
Pastries at the bus stop --
The odds it would be you

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Alice Mattison's new novel, WHEN WE ARGUED ALL NIGHT, will be published by Harper Perennial as a paperback original on June 12, 2012. She's the author of 5 other novels, most recently NOTHING IS QUITE FORGOTTEN IN BROOKLYN, 4 collections of stories, and a book of poems. Many of her stories have appeared in The New Yorker and other magazines. She grew up in Brooklyn, New York and has lived for a long time in New Haven, Connecticut. She teaches fiction writing in the Bennington Writing Seminars, the low-residency MFA program at Bennington College in Vermont.

Reviews

[Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alice is a masterful short story writer. She's kind of the Jewish-American William Trevor. Everything is beautifully observed but not overdone. The people are palpable. She deserves a wider readership.

[Mel · Rating 1 out of 5]

First story, for which the book got its title, is about a Jewish wife, Bobbie, and her son, set aside by her husband. Her husband moved them to an apartment and paid bills for a time, but then stops.
The story doesn't explain why her husband set her aside or why he stopped paying the bills.
Bobbie goes to work and someone sets her up with a man on a date. He turns out to be married. Supposedly a mistake in him responding incorrectly to a question, "are you merry?"
Bobbie finds out, oh, spoiler, and she doesn't tell him she knows and he never tells.
And in the end supposedly this is okay, because we need to keep secrets?
Perhaps this was why her husband set her aside?

The story felt disjointed and didn't flow smoothly.
Robert Louis Stevenson writes much better if you want to read short stories.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent collection of short stories. The stories vary in degree of interest and satisfaction (at least for me), but the two final, exceptional stories bring the reader full circle and connect whatever might have felt unfulfilled. Caution to those who are used to dipping in and reading a story here or there: connected collections should be read in order. And in fact all short story collections should be read in the order presented, but this is especially true with stories that tie characters and events together. I now want to read everything Mattison has written.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories grew on me as I realized the complex interconnections and the stylistic devices that linked them. Together, the stories tell an extended family narrative, though the chronology is deliberately--and, I think, successfully--jumbled. It's got some good and I think usually accurate points to make about Jewish identity too. The author reveals the stylistic devices in a note at the end of the book. I'd recommend looking at it before reading the stories.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

The connected stories cross generations of one extended family. The author adds a twist,as following an old poetic convention, she includes several elements in every story, such as a glass of water, a cord, a knife, a missing item, etc. It's interesting to note the variety of ways these are introduced in each story, but the stories are satisfying on their own.

[Kristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Look at the end of the book first. The author makes a note that the book is written in a similar fashion to a sestina poem. She tells you the common threads of each story. I found that interesting and wish I knew that BEFORE I read the book.

[Ruth Sternberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the way the stories are intertwined. And Mattison is a master of description, from emotion to appearance.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an unexpected pleasure this collection turned out to be. I hadn't read Mattison before (or heard of her, that I recall), and chose this book for the cover. I was hoping to find a story or two that held my attention, but In Case We're Separated turned out to be a collection of fiction where the sum feels greater than the parts. Each one of these stories is a gem, with characters that come to life on the page and details that turn our attention toward the humane moments of life. With little fanfare, these stories dive deep into the everyday and bring back a refreshing take on the timelessness of family. And even more, the connections don't feel easily coincidental (one of my frequent gripes with linked stories), but rather like hard-won victories. A collection to be savored and enjoyed.

[Treasure Island Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of linked short stories is impressive by itself. What put it over the top for me was the inclusion of recurring words explained in a brief paragraph after the stories ended. Mattison shaped the book in a double sestina format (twelve sections which included the recurring words). Fascinating!

[oldgradstudent · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this. The story of a family over multiple generation set in BKLYN and Boston. Each story contains certain items - and if you know to look for them this is as much fun as trying to remember how the people are related.

[Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars, rounded up. The stories are connected around an extended Jewish family and hop around different decades, different cultures. They are lovely and surprising and moving.

[Lorri · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Case We’re Separated: Connected Stories, by Alice Mattison, gives the reader thirteen stories that delve into family dynamics. From immediate family members to extended family members the book is relayed in stanzas.

Each person within the familial realm is depicted and connected through specifics. That these specifics are basically ordinary can be deceiving to the reader. From decade to decade they carry these with them. The fact the characters are all Jewish immigrants connects them, but that is the primary connection that the reader can readily identify. There is more to their bonding, their caring for each other, than the eye can see.

Bobbie Kaplowitz along with her parents, sisters, and other family members demonstrate the emotional roller coaster within the family unit. Logic does not necessarily work within the infrastructure, and her sisters, Sylvia and Fanny are prime examples of that, along with the other members of the clan. Time and place might lead them in different directions, but in the end, they depend on each other, no matter what dire situations arise.

One feature that had me a bit frustrated at first was the fact that the stories bounce back and forth, and are not in chronological order. That said, I feel it worked within the pages of In Case We’re Separated: Connected Stories. The movement back, and then forward, through the decades demonstrates family individuals and their floundering moments, and represents life itself. Each person has a story to relate. Problems exist, often without a solution. Family units are often in a state of disconnection, upheaval and dysfunction.

Familial dynamics are not set in concrete, and neither is life. Emotions and thoughts run the gamut from one day to the next. Events, communications and connections take us from one extreme to another, often spanning several years. Yet, within the framework of time and separation, self-identity and acceptance of each other creates bonds that can not be broken.

In my opinion, that is the point of the thirteen stories contained in Alice Mattison’s book, In Case We’re Separated: Connected Stories.

[Noralil Fores · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written as a series of connected short stories, Alice Mattison's In Case We're Separated is, to put it frankly, one 226-page long Jewish love song. In each of the thirteen stories, the Jewishness of the characters plays a prominent role, and while at first this seems to make a statement about the culture, it progressively falls into place as a trope of emotional division from character to reader. Just when it seems as if a universal theme surfaces in the narrative, there's a reminder that "Whoopsy-daysy, we're Jewish, and that means that we're different than you are."

Beyond this, however, the book serves primarily as a photo album, the slices of familial life selected for exploration in the stories, those pictures which are now a bit flat, faded and forgetable with time. So much of the rule "show, don't tell" is broken throughout the book, its major incidents of interest relegated to one-line descriptions that make way for belabored passages and character interactions. In this way, unlike Mattison's novel The Book Borrower, In Case We're Separated fails to embrace its warm, personal details with overall appeal. Rather, this is merely a look at a family history banal in its affairs, neorosis, disconnections and reconnections.

Structurally, Mattison plays with the complicated formula of the sestina, using the repetitive images of "a glass of water, a sharp point, a cord, a mouth, an exhange, and a map that may be wrong," she writes in 'A Note to the Reader." While this imposed structure may have done her some good in the writing, and on a subtle level allowed for a pattern-building effect in the overall narrative, it serves as little more than a writer's exercise, one to be respected but not seen here as of great importance in furthering the stories' meanings.

All told, this is certainly not Mattison's best effort, and it's little surprise that the hardback version can be found in discounted bins at Barnes & Noble.

[Annemariem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thirteen stories connecting the members of a Jewish immigrant family in the States across the span of a century. From the book itself:

"She picked up her two handbags - a big black purse and a black tote bag full of manuscripts - and left the apartment, dressed but with unbrushed teeth. All the way down in the elevator, she screamed. Ruth Hillsberg - Ms. Insight - had guessed nothing. On the way to work she bought a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a new hairbrush, in case she hadn't even brushed her hair that morning. Her lover had done wrong, yes, but people do wrong. She was angry because for all his easy regret, he did not know he'd done wrong.
On the other hand, she'd gained the apartment, and in exchange for nothing more than saving her screams for the elevator."

In the back of the book a note to the reader: "this book's thirteen stories imitate in prose the thirteen stanzas of a double sestina, using repeated topics or tropes in something like the way a sestina - the poetic form described in the story 'Brooklyn Sestina' - uses repeated words. In the changing order prescribed by the sestina pattern, each story includes a glass of water, a sharp point, a cord, a mouth, an exchange, and a map that may be wrong."

Keep this in mind when you read the book. It guarantees chuckles and wonderment.

[Shelley · Rating 1 out of 5]

How the heck did this book get a 4 rating, not to mention "A Notable Book of the Year, The New York Times Book Review", it was awful and boring! When I read the back of the book in the store, I thought yeah, this sounds great, but it was far from it. It's about a family of Jewish immigrants that span over generations, except it didn't flow nicely. I couldn't connect with any one character as a result. It went back and forth with different generations and it was random stories picked out from their lives, which were, well, boring! The thirteen stories each shared repeated topics or tropes in something like the way of a sestina. Each chapter shared a glass of water, a sharp point, a cord, a mouth, an exchange, and a map that may be wrong. Sounds interesting right? "Sounds" is the key word here, because it was right up there in the worst books I've ever read. I think this author could had made her story more interesting in using the stanzas if she just written about one family/one generation because 226 pages is not enough to make it many generations.

[Sooz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't have a lot of focus right now in my life, and each night as I climbed into bed with my cup of tea and my book, my head would often fill with wool, making a kind of whispering sound, and my eyes would have a cross-eyed feeling as I attempted to read. I thought it was the book, but I had just come through a "dry spell" of reading and I really wanted to break it, so I persisted. About three-quarters of the way through this book, it hooked me. The stories are like a jigsaw puzzle; every story contains different perspectives of a wide-spread family, so that you experience people from different angles and at different points in their lives. There is an extra surprise note to the reader on the very last page which contains a still-further secret key to all of the stories. Amazing project for a writer, this book!

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite new writer of the last few years, I think--a very Paley-esque vision of Jewish lefty quirkiness. Either her or Steve Stern, who works in Singer territories of Jewish folklore and sex, but in Memphis, which actually did have kind of an impressive Jewish heritage, I learned when visiting. (At least for the South.) This is a double sestina of stories (the same elements are recycled in different forms in each story, in the order prescribed--I was not smart enough or educated enough to notice this, but a helpful afterword points this out) about another Jewish family's entanglements over the course of a half-century, with a similarly wry acceptance of the way things sometimes work out.

[Sammyj97 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories. The stories are about the extended members of a Jewish family originating in Brooklyn. This book is imitation Sestina. There are 13 stories. All 13 stories have the same items in them: a sharp object, a mouth, a map, a cord, a glass of water and an exchange. And a sixth common component being the family member of course. All objects and people (still living anyway) are present in the final chapter. I liked this book. I liked the Sestina aspect to it. I think it is an excellent writing exercise. The stories were varied. I really like Alice Mattison's writing. I do not LOVE every book she has written or LOVE all her characters. I don't blindly LOVE everything about any author. But I will always read her books. She know how to write.

[MBenzz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I'm not a fan of short stories, I really enjoyed this book because all the tales are connected. These stories are about different individuals of the Kaplowitz family. A very large Jewish family who's spread out all over the place.

My only issue with the book was just how large the family was. Between kids, and grandkids, husbands, wives...some chapters I had to go back to earlier stories to figure out who I was reading about, and what branch of the family they came from.

Other than that, it was a really good book. These stories are of everyday trials that we go through throughout the span of our lives. I absolutely recommend this, and would definitely pick up another of Ms. Mattison's novels.

[Suzy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really liked this book. The content was ordinary, but I loved the way it was written. Mattison used a sestina to write the stories. A sestina is a type of structured poem. I wasn't familiar with sestina's before reading this book, and didn't realize that's what the author was doing until I finished the book. The story involves an immigrant Jewish family and their children and their children's children, etc. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Jewish literature.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

As many know, I hate short stories. I fall in love with characters, plots, themes and then have them all yanked away. Not quite sure how I ended up with this one, but it sat on my shelf for a long, long time. I loved the writing~ the bit about editing being like the untangling of tights is such a great example of the craft. Still saddened by the completion of the stories, but the fact that the characters visited and appeared in other stories made it less bittersweet.

[Ann Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm always a sucker for inter-connected short stories: where each story stands on its own but characters reappear at different times of their lives and in different combinations. This one has the added twist, which you learn only at the end, of being in the form of a sestina, with certain words and scenes occuring in each story in the order prescribed by the poetic form. I'm sure I'm not the only reader who then immediately re-read the book, looking for the themes as they reappeared.

[julia stone]

i will confess that this book is loved uniformly by all of my aunts, and especially by my mother. mattison talks about somerville! and this book is written using such a funky sestina-like pattern...stunning. family and love and lots of jewish resonance. short stories are great for the ol' commute. enjoy!

[Ellie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book. It is actually a series of interconnected short stories. It kinda reminded me of hte jOy luck club only for jewish women in the 21st century. Maybe not as depressing though. More subtle

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories - all about members of an extended family from the 50's to present. An interesting look at how families change and relate to each other over time by an author that I have always enjoyed.

[Cynthia Paschen · Rating 4 out of 5]

After I read the Book Borrower, I decided that I would love everything this woman has ever written. I went to our local used bookstore and asked the man to order used copies of everything she has ever written. This one was not a disappointment. The stories are connected.

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I learned from this book is that I'm not smart enough to understand how all these short stories connect other than the characters that pop up in them. I enjoyed some of them, others not so much. Maybe a more literate scholar would get more out of them. The ending was rather unsatisfying.

[Christopher Mack · Rating 2 out of 5]

thought the stories were a little self-indulgent and jumped around too much between different generations and branches of the family (for no apparent story-enhancing reason). was glad when it was done.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good - this is a collection of short stories written in the poetic sestina form - well done. Stories center on Brooklyn Jews in 50s-60s-70s - can get tiring but interesting.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was such an interesting book. If you want to try something different, this book is great.