On Tuesdays, They Played Mah Jongg

Stern, Milton. "On Tuesdays, They Played Mah Jongg", Starbooks, 2006. Recognizing Characters Amos Lassen "On Tuesdays, They Played Mah Jongg" is a book that is filled with characters that we can all recognize. For me it was a trip down memory lane--my mother was one of those Jewish Mah Jongg players with a gay son. The women in the book are all people we know or have known, they are the "quintessential 80's menopausal women" and they share complaints and bouffant hair-dos. They keep secrets (or so they think). Michael, the narrator of the book, takes us through his past in therapy with great detail. He is 40 plus and he has no addictions--he doesn't drink, he is from Virginia, he is Jewish and gay and he is surrounded by women of middle age. (Oy, is this story familiar!). He has just returned to Los Angeles where he has been a television comedy writer after a trip home to Virginia to go to the funeral of one of the women in his mother's Mah Jongg group. He had not been home for a very long time and his return brought back many memories from his childhood which gives him the impetus to finish writing the screenplay he has been working on for twenty years. He begins going to therapy and tells him his joys and sorrows, his hopes and desires and about the five Jewish women and the stories they had. I am not sure if I can really classify this as gay fiction since the only things gay about it are Michael and his doctor. It is actually more of a Southern Jewish novel. The book is really about the five Southern Jewish women and their stories and their lives together. We meet and get to love Florence, Hannah, Rona, Arlene and Doreen. Michael tells the stories in clean and simple prose and I laughed all the way through. The book is peppered with details and descriptions. Told in a series of flashbacks that works, the book is pure fun.

I believe almost everyone would recognize the women in this book, regardless of their ethnicity. From hot flashes (appropriately nicknamed "personal summers"), to their dyed-and-teased hair, bright clothes, and heavy makeup, to their kibitzing and weekly Mah-Jongg games, the women of Milton Stern's On Tuesdays, They Played Mah-Jongg are our aunts, our mothers, our sisters, our friends, and our neighbors. In Stern's characters we find the quintessential 80's menopausal woman, from their big, teased hair to their complaints about their sex lives - or lack thereof - to the secrets they keep. Stern perfectly captures the post-retirement lifestyle in small towns particularly during the mid-eighties in the South, which serves as the setting for the story. I found this book to be a fun, fast read, with a few twists that actually gave me pause because I never saw them coming. I liked Stern's style -- the story is told in a series of flashbacks as Michael, the narrator, explores his past in therapy - which I found different from what a I normally expect to see in a novel. The device works for this one, and Stern's attention to detail is marvelous, adding depth to both the characters and the world they live in. The only thing I found a bit disconcerting was the head hopping -- the bouncing from one character's thoughts to the next within the same scene, sometimes from paragraph to paragraph. It still wasn't anything that kept me from enjoying this novel from start to finish. All in all, I fell in love with Stern's characters, his settings, and most all, his sense of humor, which truly shines in this novel.

This book is absolutely wonderful. The detail and descriptions make you feel as if you are watching the interactions unfold. Although told with a spin of humor you can feel the underlying range of emotions that the characters experience. It is a definite can't put down, have to finish in one sitting type of book.

Milton's book is fun and kept me racing back to see what was going to happen next between this cool group of friends. Well written, easy to read and enjoyable.

AN UNFINISHED SCREENPLAY FIVE MENOPAUSAL JEWISH WOMEN ONE STRANGE YEAR For two decades, Michael Bern, a gay television writer in Hollywood, has stared at an unfinished screenplay sitting on his desk. After attending a friend's funeral in his hometown of Newport News, Virginia, Michael returns to Hollywood and finds there is more than a screenplay that is unfinished in his life. He finally confronts what the screenplay represents - memories and stories of the sometimes sad, often hilarious characters of his past, especially his mother and her four closest friends. Florence, Hannah, Rona, Arlene and Doreen - five more fascinating, menopausal, Jewish women one would never meet. They were friends for more than forty years and saw each other through life's triumphs, tragedies and multiple spouses. Yet, there was only one constant in their lives. On Tuesdays, they played Mah Jongg.