Strangers and Cousins

by Leah Hager Cohen

A novel about what happens when an already sprawling family hosts an even larger and more chaotic wedding: an entertaining story about family, culture, memory, and community.

In the seemingly idyllic town of Rundle Junction, Bennie and Walter are preparing to host the wedding of their eldest daughter Clem. A marriage ceremony at their beloved, rambling home should be the happiest of occasions, but Walter and Bennie have a secret. A new community has moved to Rundle Junction, threatening the social order and forcing Bennie and Walter to confront uncomfortable truths about the lengths they would go to maintain harmony.

Meanwhile, Aunt Glad, the oldest member of the family, arrives for the wedding plagued by long-buried memories of a scarring event that occurred when she was a girl in Rundle Junction. As she uncovers details about her role in this event, the family begins to realize Clem’s wedding may not be exactly what it seemed. Clever, passionate, artistic Clem has her own agenda. What she doesn’t know is that by the end, everyone will have roles to play in this richly-imagined ceremony of familial connection - a brood of quirky relatives, effervescent college friends, ghosts emerging from the past, a determined little mouse, and even the very group of new neighbors whose presence has shaken Rundle Junction to its core.

With Strangers and Cousins, Leah Hager Cohen delivers a story of pageantry and performance, hopefulness and growth, and introduces a winsome, unforgettable cast of characters whose lives are forever changed by events that unfold and reverberate across generations.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Book Club, Family, Literary Fiction, American, Audiobook

320 pages, Hardcover

First published May 14, 2019

About the author

Leah Hager Cohen has written four non-fiction books, including Train Go Sorry and Glass, Paper, Beans, and four novels, including House Lights and The Grief of Others.

She serves as the Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross, and teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review.

Reviews

[Ron Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leah Hager Cohen’s new novel about a quirky family planning a wedding in a tumbledown house contains all the stale promise of an arthritic rom-com.

But it’s an absolute delight. And if anything about “Strangers and Cousins” sounds tepid or old-fashioned, know that Cohen has infused this story with the most pressing concerns of our era. The result is an unusually substantive comedy, a perfect summer novel: funny and tender but also provocative and wise.

The book is divided into five episodes, like the five acts of a stage play, one for each day of the week culminating with the wedding of 22-year-old Clem. She’s the eldest of four children who belong to Bennie and Walter Blumenthal, a white family that has lived for generations in the small town of Rundle Junction. That Clem is marrying a black woman doesn’t bother any of these good liberals. They’re more concerned about the format of the ceremony itself: A student of experimental theater, Clem wants a wedding that deconstructs matrimony, “a kind of paratheater in which the border between art and life is dissolved.” Her ever-patient parents are quietly skeptical, but openly supportive.

“Everything is vaudeville in this house,” Cohen writes. The family, never orderly even under normal circumstances, has become a whirling dervish of preparation for the upcoming ceremony in their backyard. Bennie, mother of the bride, fantasizes about an idealized tableau entitled “Mother and Daughter on the Eve of the Daughter’s Nuptials, an Idyll of Great Poignancy Attended by Love, Fear and Hope.” But her efforts to get organized are hilariously thwarted. Among her adorable antagonists is a 5-year-old superhero who storms around the house wearing a cape — and nothing else. His siblings aren’t much more help. Eight-year-old Samantha keeps whacking people with a cast on her arm, and their older brother, Tom, has recently discovered just how handsome he is.

Youngsters are hard to handle in life, even harder in. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

A trumpet falls from the sky… Linens are soft as cream… A vision of a sunflower seed… A mouse nibbling, nibbling, nibbling....real footsteps in real time...the oblong moon hangs like apricots... cinnamon whispers...a fire....shared silence...peace and longing...4 days before the wedding...3 days before the wedding....2 days...1 day....
The day of the wedding... pregnancy brain... the kids are too young to understand all the backstage of putting on a wedding.... who’s going to clean the bathrooms?...
Who will make sure there are fresh hand towels?.... has enough thought gone into the food? Has anyone thought about food poisoning? Do they know how to keep food hot… And food cold properly?.... bridesmaids...pageants...performance theater...rain storm...a wedding ring anyone?...family....friends.... chocolate smudges on the refrigerator door...death.... from colon cancer and pancreatic cancer....old memories....children, old farts, are all part of this chaotic family gathering.....with THE BLUMENTHALS....( in Rundle Junction, New York)....
The Blumenthal parents: Bennie and Walter - both have significant secrets....
Clementine ( Clem).... oldest daughter....( 4 siblings total), is marrying her college girlfriend....
NO THANK YOU...NO THANK YOU...NO THANK YOU....Lovable demeanor, Lloyd, says sweetly NO THANK YOU...to: college, a year abroad, to forestry school, to culinary school....NO THANK YOU EVERYONE!!!! (parents died...I bet he wanted to say NO THANK YOU to their death!!!!).....
Instreaming ultra orthodox Jews are feared: they will lower the property and social values: those Jews with their yarmulkes, and Jewish ways....
Aunt Gladys might be frail at 94 years of age...but nothing is wrong with her hearing...(too bad for us)....
“Strangers and Cousins”, is divided into five parts......
Episode one: Monday... episode two: Tuesday... episode three: Wednesday.... episode four...Thursday... episode five: Friday

What to expect?..... YOUR MIND ‘MIGHT’ FEEL ON FIRE....
More than once I said to myself...”what the F#CK am I reading?????
At times I felt like I was back in Hebrew school practicing a Torah portion....
having to pay close attention to vowelizations and intonations....
I wondered....”ARE THERE PROPER RULES FOR UNDERSTANDING all the poetically contrived sentences from Leah Hager Cohen?” Whew....I don’t think so!!! This book is a rabble-rousing bizzare- unconventional quirky & lyrical novel....
WITH A STORY TO TELL....but those SENTENCES are unlike anything I’ve read.

Leah Hager Cohen has UNIMAGINABLE IMMAGINATION!!!
...THIS BOOK IS A TRIP....
...Leah’s WRITING IS A TRIP!!!!
Outrageous, preposterous, ludicrous, absurd, ENTERTAINING, tantalizing, charming, sweet & gentle....and sagacious!

“ALL HOMES ARE NO MORE THAN TEMPORARY”.
“LIFE ITSELF IS TEMPORAL”

I loved it....CRAZY challenging.....UNLESS....you let go....get out of your head...and enjoy the experience!


5 stars for the most creative book I’ve read all year!

[JanB]

DNF at page 70.

A dysfunctional family story combined with a chaotic family wedding sounds like perfect summer reading to me so I was excited when offered a copy for review. The writing is excellent but the story was a struggle for me. The blurb and description did not seem fitting. It's not funny, light, and breezy but demands strict attention, which I'm not in the mood for right now. I was dreading picking it up so decided to let it go

Not every book is for every reader and this one was not for me.

* I received a copy of this book from Riverhead publishing for review

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

A solid 2.5. The author likes the sound of her voice more than I do.

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated the warmth and wisdom infused in this jam-packed book about a family preparing for a wedding. Clem (who is white and queer) is marrying her Black college lover. Her mother is preoccupied with her own secret and her father and brother with the controversy of Orthodox Jews moving into and changing their town. A pivotal event in her great aunt's childhood is also woven throughout the book. Although I like Hager Cohen's writing, I felt unmoored while reading this meandering novel. I wished she had chosen one of the threads and gone with it!

[Emma Reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

*2.5 stars*

The writing style of this book was beautiful, it really was, but the story just wasn’t for me. It was confusing, it didn’t make any sense, and the characters were kinda annoying. Also, the ending was very lacking.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5, rounded down.

I came to this on the strength of Ron Charles' rave review in the Washington Post [https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...], and although for the most part it WAS worth reading, I was not quite as enthralled with it as he was.

One of the problems may have been that Cohen strives for a 'Patchett-esque' (to coin a phrase) family comic drama ... and having just read the latest 'genuine article', this pales by comparison. And although such comparisons may be odious (and unfair), I've always found Patchett's prose to be both effortless and enchanting; Cohen's is overly fussy and strives too hard for effect [For example: 'At this hour a kind of lemonade light streams in the office window, pouring libations over the lower half of the cot and illuminating the gold-speck constellations revolving above.' p. 278]. Twenty pages from the end, there is a disastrous page long run-on sentence, with parentheticals within parentheses, that I had to read three times, and even then, I gave up trying to parse any meaning from it. And several 'surprises' seem more inevitabilities - you don't introduce a 94 year old ailing character and NOT expect her to expire before the end of the book!

Despite these longueurs, the story has a certain whimsical charm, with quirky characters and some amusing set pieces. It didn't exactly make me want to investigate the author's extensive back catalogue any, however, nor eagerly await her next tome.

[Bruce Katz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is just a marvelous, magical book that readers will either respond enthusiastically to or roll their eyes at. It's frenetic, playfully serious and seriously playful, delightful, revelatory... Capturing its essence is impossible. In my mind, it is "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (complete with a resident diminutive Puck and 'rude mechanicals' acting out a bizarre, unintelligible theaterical piece) played out in a 21st century progressive household, a description that will be absolutely incomprehensible to people who don't read it. (I know, I know: bad form on my part.)

The basics are simple enough: A wedding is about to take place in a town in Duchess County, N.Y., called Rundle Junction. Mom is in her 40s and pregnant (a condition she hasn't told her kids about), member of a Christian family with deep roots in town. Dad is Jewish, singer of protest songs as he cooks and bakes bread, and seeker of socio-economic justice. The youngest child is Pim -- a magpie of a child with a vivid imagination and little sense of restraint. Mantha (nee Samantha), preternaturally poised for her mere 8 years, wears (and wields) a cast as her broken arm heals. Tom, the teen, revels in his maturing body and sneaks off in the night to smoke rolled cigarettes (and, later, weed). The daughter bride-to-be is Clementine, slightly unmoored, insecure, self-absorbed in the manner of the young; without sharing any details with her family, Clem has scripted her wedding as performance art. The woman she is to marry is Diggs, a young, more grounded, slightly older black lawyer. Rounding out the picture are various other relatives (most notably wise and loving, fire-scarred Aunt Glad -- Gladys -- fading repository of town and family history), friends, neighbors, unexpected drop-ins, and more distantly, newcomers to town -- Haredi, ultra-Orthodox Jews: the "black hats."

Got all that? Didn't think so. But that's OK.

Certain themes recur in various guises: the permanence of the past, the tensions and connections of families and generations, the vast richness of life. (There's a pregnant mouse that... never mind; you'll see for yourself. Or you won't.)

Events and characters don't so much evolve in the book as burst forth with enormous energy, like this exuberant portrait of Chana, one of the bridesmaids (the other bridesmaid is Hannah, of course): She’s like one of those crazy lawn sprinklers, broadcasting identical drops of affection in every direction: she ‘love’ this eighties move, that psych professor, the guy who makes the omelets in the cafeteria, your purple Danskos, her horoscope, your tweet, your status update, your Snapchat, your hashtag, Ashtanga, quinoa, chia, acai, chai, Gaga, raga, crab Rangoon, the harvest moon, how you rearranged your room.

But there are moments of tenderness too, and bursts of lyrical magic: “The midmorning sun seems to rear back before her, gilding the high grass as she parts it with her strides. Grasshoppers spark up in her path.”

I loved Cohen's comic insights into the awful moral self-consciousness that is the burden of modern progressives. In addition to hiding from their kids the fact that a new brother or sister is on the way, Walter and Bennie have kept quiet about their plans to sell the family house: It's falling apart and ultra-Orthodox Jews are moving into the neighborhood, aggressively trying to buy up all the properies they can in order to create an insular, halakha-based "space for shuls and yeshivas." What would that do to the town's character? To home values? Walter and Bennie wrestle uneasily with this dilemma, this "specter of invading Otherness": What they alone understand: any opinion either of them has about the unfolding drama involving swastikas and lawn signs is inevitably tainted by self-interest, the desire to get a good price. And they sit there now, regarding each other across the old scratched table in the breakfast nook, united by guilt. And even though Walter is defensively, tribalistically angry with Bennie’s unspoken insinuation and Bennie is angry with Walter’s resistance to even considering the common sense of what she has so far tactfully refrained from explicitly suggesting, they are bound by their shared sense of guilt...

And then there's the delightful way Cohen captures the ways in which human events endlessly repeat themselves: In the darkness, Walter nods. He does know. He does. And for some reason, in his mind he’s sitting behind the counter of Fiebush’s [his father's luncheonette where he spent childhood hours], watching an unbroken stream of souls processing the aisle, a kind of surreal cavalcade encompassing several decades’ worth of the neighborhood’s ever-evolving populaces: first the ultra-Orthodox, men in long beards and black hats, followed by a succession of others in Mao and Nehru jackets, then kurtas and saris, then guayaberas and halter tops, then biker vests and mini-skirts, and finally hipsters – men in long beards and black hats.

As I said, there's no way I can capture the heart of this book. "Strangers and Cousins" is more to be experienced than merely read. Just open yourself to its many delightful characters and its luminous sense of time and be surprised by its wisdom.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a long wait for this book that seems to be popular, but I really could not understand what this was actually about. Well, for one thing it is a countdown to a strange wedding with a great deal of coming and going of guests, relatives and new neighbors there seems to be a fear of (Orthodox Jews). Maybe I can grab a few sentences from my highlights and plop them into this review.

"'who are these people just showing up at our house? And when were you going to inform us about them? Or excuse me—stupid question: clearly you weren’t. Clearly you didn’t feel the need to tell us. Let alone ask. How could it not occur to you to ask if it would be okay to have more people over before they just show up? Before they just waltz into the kitchen where, incidentally, I guess I’m now about to start preparing supper for”—she does a quick calculation— “nineteen.'"
...and this was followed by the mother stating that she knew people were smoking pot in the tents...

It seems a very helter skelter scene to me, and what I think I am supposed to find amusing just does not work for me.

[Kacey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clem was the worst.

[Barbi · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm shocked I finished it. Paper characters, oh so philosophical. Plots and story lines all over the place none of which came together. Sorry to be so brutal.

[Amy Bruestle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book through a giveaway in exchange for an honest review....

Ugh....this book. I honestly don’t even know where to begin! The characters were interesting....in a good way. The writing was pretty good. But something just didn’t mesh well with me. I liked the story line for the most part....but I guess it just had parts to it that were a bit strange and just didn’t work in my opinion. However, the author did a great job portraying the lives of family in an everyday sort of way. She described things perfectly and made me feel like the characters were my family members too!

[Kris (My Novelesque Life) · Rating 3 out of 5]

RATING: 2.5 STARS
(Review Not on Blog)

This novel started out with so much promise, but 90 pages in I was a bit confused and started to get tired of keeping up with the story. It is well-written in that the prose is beautiful, but I just didn't gel with the story and characters as I thought I would. I would try another book by the author.

[Diana Rivers · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was so so terrible. Boring plot, overly flowery writing, silly names and nicknames.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

STRANGERS AND COUSINS is beautifully written; I was immediately drawn into this novel. I was pleased with the sometimes laugh out loud humor. The story centers around a wedding taking place in an old family home. A memorable cast of characters is included in this novel which people will appreciate and remember long after reading. I would give this novel more of a 4.5 rating. I very happy to have been given this book, and thanks to Ms. Cohen!

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

While, at times, I enjoyed Stranger and Cousins I found that it really dragged for me. Cohen certainly writes about the mundaneness of family life in an interesting way but it felt like too much for me at times. I did, however, enjoy her commentary on the way that our families define and shape us and how we can come to question those things as we begin to come of age and form our own beliefs. Cohen can certainly write, I just wanted a little more action in this one. ⠀

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook,beautifully narrated by the author.

My only complaint is that I wanted to note passages! I can't do that on an audiobook! There are lovely insights and beautiful scenes that I wanted to linger over, mark, and return to.

The author takes the story of a wedding and turns it into a study of community, family, and acceptance of change. A marvel.

[Denise Cormaney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Barely 3. The summary of the story should be a home run for me, but the writing was so stilted and disjointed it often felt like a slog. I wanted to love it but by the end I was glad to be able to pick up something else. That said, the actual story was good and brought out deeper questions to consider about community and who gets to decide how it evolves. And I really liked the characters! The characters felt very real. Sigh. This could’ve been a home run.

[Marcy · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF - after 100 pages I just couldn’t get into the writing style of this book and was mostly bored with the characters and storyline.

[Giorgia Legge Tanto · Rating 4 out of 5]

E' un libro che mi ha fatto ridere tanto. A casa dei Blumenthal, Bennie e Walter, si sta preparando il matrimonio della figlia Clem e della compagna Diggs. I preparativi si susseguono, tra una gravidanza inaspettata e un episodio successo novant'anni prima all'antenata Glad. Ma ci sono stati purtroppo anche degli attacchi antisemiti, dai vicini dei Blumenthal, e questo non fa che alimentare le situazioni tragicomiche di questo libro. Ogni personaggio ha un segreto da nascondere.

[Dawn Fitzpatrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a Washington Post reader I decided to read this book based on the reviewer's recommendation as one of the top ten books of the year. I found the story a bit jumbled as it jumps from past to present. I found the odd ball characters interesting, but it lacked the humor I was hoping for.

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

'She’s become dislocated while standing in place.'

That’s a fantastic line for this character driven novel, for family in fact. What is more dizzying than a gathering of your clan, particularly as it continues to grow? How can you not feel dislocated standing in place, and who can blame sweet Aunt Gladdy with one foot in the past and one in the present. Of course she slips in and out of time, gets confused by the faces and happenings, it’s a full life she’s been having. She and little Pim are my absolute favorite characters in this family novel. Pim lives in his own little world, battling unseen enemies in the buff, oblivious to the drama of the grown ups. Actually, he and Gladdy share similarities, youth and old age are so tightly intertwined (one coming as the other is slowly leaving), one battling imaginary foes as the other deals with ghosts of memories.

Walter and Bennie Blumenthal’s daughter (eldest of four children) Clementine, is marrying her college girlfriend, Diggs. But this is a special sort of wedding, a performance of sorts. Like all things meant to go against tradition with the best of intentions it can get out of hand. There will be an invasion, the Blumenthal’s are meant to accommodate nine extra people in a house already full with six family members. The real intruders to Walter’s thinking are the ultra-Orthodox Jews, going around town asking the locals to sell, trying to tip the demographics in their favor where they are sure to infiltrate all that has been, destroying entire communities. Bennie and Walter have two big secrets, one that may upset the ‘status quo’, help the very people he is against. If he and Bennie sell, they will be party to the ruin of this special community. Even Clem, as liberated as she is assumes so much about bride to be Diggs, based on her ethnicity. Aunt Gladdy is in the past, remembering fire, after-all her skin is marred, a constant reminder of an earlier tragedy. There is a constant struggle with old versus new, in a sense. Loss, tragedy and change. Even open to accepting the ever changing world, there are fears that sway our decision making as a family, and as a community. Lloyd is the ‘prodigal one’, and has a great conversation with Tom about loyalty and what we owe our families and ourselves as he struggles with Walter’s distrust of the Haredi, and I can’t think of a more perfect example of the inner struggles children face in life. Parents raise their children to think for themselves and then feel betrayed when they might have a different opinion or view. Sometimes just in examining how they feel about a situation can force us to see our own blind loyalty to old, or outdated versions of truth. Family dynamics are always at play when you’re under the same dwelling for any amount of time. It’s hinted at in moments “What? What’s going on?” there’s a note of jealousy in her voice, a hint of the old kid sister don’t-leave-me-out petulance,' when Carrie senses the tension while Bennie and Walter fight about the Haredi.

Then there is that mouse, that poor little mouse whose just going about living among the humans, whom she scavenges from. The animal just trucks on, starts over when everything falls apart, a new generation when the one before is destroyed.

Gladdy is overlooked by her family, as the aging so often are even if they are beloved, and yet if anyone has understood change and how deeply a turn of a moment can bite, it’s her. 'She is the wisest of them all, Clem’s too young to hear the truth (How could one so young be expected to understand?), that the world itself is no more than temporary.'It is a novel about change, because whether we accept it or not, change comes.
via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
For me, the title is interesting because family can sometimes feel like strangers too. Eventually, everything can start to feel unfamiliar as the old ways die off, the hardest of all is letting go of truth as we have known it to be and allowing the next generation to flourish. A story of constant upheaval, strange and interesting relatives, secrets, births, deaths, tragedies, intruders and how we live on in scraps of memories until there is no one left to remember.

Published May 14, 2019 Available Now

Riverhead Books

[Jill Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are certain sure-fire, winning plots for an author to get his hands on. One of those is the novel which centers around a wedding. (Or a funeral, I suppose). But a wedding is better because you've got two families coming together, filled with all sorts of could-be scenarios of different religions, skin-colors, wealth, political, gender issues, and so many others. Oh, the wealth of material a good author has to work with when the plot centers around a wedding.

Leah Hager Cohen is a good writer but I'm not sure her new novel, "Strangers and Cousins", is quite as good as it could have been. The reason, as I see it, is that there are too many characters to support the plot. We have the wedding of Clemmie, a white, half-WASP/half Jewish recent college graduate and her black girlfriend, Diggs. Diggs really is quite a bit smarter and sharper than Clemmie, but who knows the ways of love. They're marrying at Clemmie's family's house in a town north of New York City; a town that has attracted "Black Hats" - Hareadim - who are buying up real estate to establish their own village. Added to the brides are their parents, siblings, college friends, relatives, and friends, and a ghost of sorts who is in the mind of Clemmie's dying great-aunt. There was a terrible fire in the village back in 1927 which killed 14 children and injured many others, including Clemmie's great-aunt. Add to this various pregnancies and other life changing events going on the weekend of the wedding.

Hager Cohen could have taken, say six main characters, and made a very good book. Pared down, the book would have read better. She has a nice writing style and I loved the way she'd talk about a character and include things that happened to them in the future. I also loved meeting the mice who lived in the family house and barn. "Strangers and Cousins" has so much going for it, I just wish it was a little more concentrated on a few. I can definitely recommend it.

[Kristi Lamont · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK, most of my family and friends? You won't like this. Move on along.

I tried to summarize/explain this book to my husband at lunch today. "It was like a derivation on the theme of A Midsummer's Night's Dream, the 1935 version with Mickey Rooney as Puck that was so trippy!"

I continued on, talking about different Jewish sects and marriage rituals and more....and he said, "It sounds a lot like 'Fiddler on the Roof,' too."

Which, of course, it did. Does. Did.

(Have I ever mentioned that I married him because he is so much smarter than me?)

As an extreme liberal, I got more than aggravated at a lot of the extreme liberalness of it all. As a person who has hope for the future of humankind? The ending had me in gentle tears.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I listened to the audio version and got tired of all the lists and digressions. If I'd been reading instead, I could have skipped over all that stuff. There was a principal story line that was the main plot driver, but ultimately seemed to be irrelevant to the point the author was trying to make. I feel like the book presented as a plot-driven story, but was really a "days in the life of these characters" book, and I'm not a big fan of "days in the life" books; I got really tired of it all by the end. I loved the early part of the book, though, some of the character development (Aunt Glad, I'm thinking of you) was really stunning. It just went on too long for me.

[Cynthia Oliver · Rating 1 out of 5]

What?

I did not get this book at all. It started started out fine but quickly got really convoluted. There's very little warning of when you are changing from present and last-sometimes it tells you, sometimes it doesn't. Beyond confusing and overall boring.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marriage is what’s real. Weddings are such pageantry. This sweet and thoughtful look as an extended family gathers for an unconventional wedding is such a provocative listen.

[Jess · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t think I like a single one of these characters

[Maison Koala · Rating 4 out of 5]

BIG SUR, la collana dell'ottima casa editrice indipendente dedicata alla cultura angloamericana, ancora una volta non delude. Regalandoci una commedia famigliare pirotecnica, sagace e ritmata, in cui l'autrice dà prova di un'immaginazione fervida e di un'abilità scrittoria invidiabile.

Nel raccontare dei cinque giorni che precedono le nozze decisamente non convenzionali di Clem, la maggiore dei quattro fratelli Blumenthal, con la compagna di corso Diggs, non trovi una, ma davvero manco una pagina in cui manchi un guizzo creativo, o linguistico, o entrambi. L'accamparsi nel giardino di casa di una sorta di "comune" strampalata - gli amici e ospiti delle neospose - non può non strappare una risata (ma anche più di una), mentre personalmente mi ha conquistata il personaggio per nulla sbiadito della prizia Glad, un'anticonvenzionale ante litteram, che invitata ultranovantenne a partecipare alle nozze alterna momenti di smarrimento a sprazzi di lucida e profonda lucidità.

Un po' lungo, se proprio devo trovare un difetto, il flashback che però funge anche da filo conduttore dedicato alla traumatica infanzia della prozia. Ma nel complesso, una lettura piacevolissima, anche se non semplice visto che l'autrice è tanto maledettamente brava a giocare con lessico e trama.

Giudizio tecnico finale: Se scappi, ti sposo. Ovvero: verrei vederlo al cinema!

[Charlie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before I begin actually talking about STRANGERS AND COUSINS, I feel compelled to opine. Ironically, this opining is just exactly what I'm about to campaign against, but, there we are. We live in an age of just such ironies, why should Goodreads and Amazon reviews be any different?

It is sometimes difficult when offering opinions on Goodreads and Amazon to limit yourself to a fair recounting of your experience reading the book, rather than, say, slipping into a litany of groundless criticism emanating from your personal prejudices without revealing those biases. Reading through some of the negative (unto toxic) write-ups here (and some repeated on Amazon) that they've less to do with the literary quality of STRANGERS AND COUSINS than with the inability of the readers/writers to imagine lives unlike their own, and, just possibly, un-examined cultural biases informing their vituperative takes on this novel.

Okay, that's off my chest. Now, here I go, all awash in my own cultural biases --- to which I freely admit herein: I am a huge proponent of multiculturalism, inclusion, and acceptance, and a vocal opponent of religions and political leanings and hate-groups that would belittle, deny, and vilify others for their beliefs, ethnicity, gender, race, gender identification, sexuality, or country of origin. Sue me.

Now, to the novel itself. STRANGERS AND COUSINS by Leah Hager Cohen is difficult to describe without sliding into verbiage that comes off as fey or John Irving-esque. Like some of the works of Elizabeth McCracken and Ann Patchett, Leah Hager Cohen creates worlds populated by unique individuals with quirks and foibles and flaws, who, despite these, remain relatable. And, too, like the Ms-es McCracken and Patchett (both geniuses, in my opinion), Leah Hager Cohen grounds her characters in history --- their idiosyncrasies are not casually whimsical, tacked on for effect, but, rather, born of circumstance and situation; motivated.

In STRANGERS AND COUSINS, Clem, the eldest daughter of Benita and Walter of small town, Rundle Junction, is coming home to marry her girlfriend, Diggs. Aunt Glad, the family matriarch (or, last and oldest standing of the previous generation) arrives at the house where she once lived, which once served not only as the family home, but also the town post office and a general store. Also at the house, Clem's siblings: Pim, the youngest who lives in fantasy lands and is most often naked between his super-hero cape; Mantha (previously Sam, as in Samantha) coming into adolescence with a vengeance and unending opinions and pouts, a terror with a hard cast she uses to attack those who get in her way or displease her; and Tom, late-teen brother who is having a homoerotic affair with his newly muscled and sexy body in every mirror he can find and in the glance of others. The plot is enriched by the arrival of groups of Clem and Digg's friends from college, Diggs' parents, Benita's (called Bennie) siblings and their offspring, and, in the town itself, an influx of Haredi --- ultra-Orthodox Jews --- which has wakened fear and prejudice couched as environmental concerns among certain townspeople.

The narrative is divided into five acts, the four days before and day of the wedding. But we are often transported to a time of tragedy in the town's history, in the 1920's, when Aunt Glad was a child and a fire --- cause unknown --- at a town event killed twelve children and scarred Glad for life --- physically and, perhaps, psychically. Too, along the way we are taken into the backstories of many of the main characters, and all of this --- the histories, the time jumps, the events leading to the wedding, the emotional journeys of the attendees, and, even, some future-telling, here and there the entire lives of characters are revealed by the omniscient narrator (and I'm not certain I was 100% in love with that) --- is handled with remarkable skill and aplomb. I was never lost or confused as to where we were --- time-wise or point-of-view wise.

I found this novel to be almost musical in structure. The ways in which characters beautifully entered and exited the narrative, the tight construction of scenes woven together into something bigger than the sum of its parts. Laughter and tears. Ups and downs and arcs for all of the characters during the course of which action they were changed --- some in small ways, some in rather enormous ways, and their decisions about their futures influenced by these events.

It was not unlike --- in that it was episodic but full of connectivity --- A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, Stephen Sondheim's adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT. Everyone is living in their own reality (and Mantha has categorized just how many kinds of reality there are) and yet, in the end, we see how these individuals come together to make community.

Birth. Death. Family. Love. Fear. Prejudice. Timely topics made entertaining and the writing is quite lovely; often lyrical, always interesting.

As I said, not sure how I felt about being told the future-entire-lives of some of the characters, and, as is often the case in musicals, the ending wasn't (for me, anyway) quite up to the preceding 300 pages.

Still, high recommend. Lovely. Charming (oh dear, I know it's dangerous to use THAT word.) And also thought provoking.