Spotless: Memories of a New York Childhood

by Sherman Yellen

Playwright, librettist, Tony nominee, and two-time Emmy Award-winning writer Sherman Yellen lovingly recreates the world of his impoverished forebears before World War I; his troubled, prosperous, mendacious father; his beautiful, willful fashion-model mother, and especially his own New York childhood in the 1930s and 40s in this remarkable family saga. Yellen's childhood witnessed both great events and the everyday life of a city boy in an embattled family, all viewed through the eyes of an observant little boy waiting impatiently for his body to catch up to his all-seeing consciousness. Yellen summons up this lost world of a New York Jewish-American family during the Great Depression and World War II with candor and love and brings it back to vivid new life.

268 pages, Paperback

Published February 2, 2017

Reviews

[bonnie pariser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable story for a NY jew

Mr. Yellens boyhood stories were a nice historical vision of growing up in the Bronx during the depression and ww2. His understanding of the immigrant Jewish immigrant mentality shed light on my own childhood and upbringing in The Bronx during the 70's and 80's. I usually do not read memoirs but happened upon this book by accident. I wish the chronology was easier to follow, but maybe that is how memoirs go. Sometimes the writing, which was good, got in the way of the story. I was happy I took the time to read it.

[Elise Warner · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engrossing memoir of a difficult childhood filled with love, fear and determination.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spotless was a totally engaging memoir written by a wonderful author, and is a must read for children of immigrants. It is an honest account of life in New York City in the 1940's and a book that I truly identified with.