Open Doors

Gloria Goldreich is now one of my favorite authors. Too bad so many of her books are only available from second-hand sellers. OPEN DOORS is a lovely book about people you'd like to know. This is the #1 criteria for me when I read a book: are these characters people I would like to know? If the answer is yes, I can root for them and really care about what happens to them. If the answer is no, it's difficult to emotionally relate. When I teach my writing classes, I emphasize again and again how important it is to create characters we can care about. And Goldreich has done just that with Elaine and her brood. Although I'm not Jewish, I love reading about the Jewish experience and the section of the book that takes place in Jerusalem was highly satisfying. As a mother of grown children, I also found Elaine's relationships with her adult children realistic and relatable. I have also tried to be the kind of mother who doesn't interfere and who has allowed her children to make their own decisions without passing judgment. Most of the time I succeeded. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that one of my children didn't appreciate my "hands off" mothering -- and would actually have liked having a mother like mine who called me twice a day and wanted to discuss every little thing going on in my life. Goldreich shows a real family learning to understand each other at a time when they can finally stop indulging in the petty jealousies and rivalries all families experience. This is a marvelous book from a marvelous writer and I'm looking forward to reading everything of Goldreich's I can get my hands on. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

The book fascinated me from its preview. It is exactly where I seem to be at this stage of my life. In addition, I have spoken to many other widows with very similar situations. Not exactly a problem but yet could become one with the wrong decision. I could feel for her. Made me feel like I'm not alone with a similar problem...what to do. I enjoyed the book and found it very easily to put myself in the character of the widow. Arlene Angel

Open Doors. By Gloria Goldreich. Mira. 496 pages. $19.95. Reviewed by LORRAINE FRAZIER For those of you who are weary of national elections, played out by the financial meltdown, and glaze over every time you hear the word recession, here is a book for you. It is about a woman, a family, and the things that matter, after all. In Open Doors, the reader is invited inward into Elaine Gordon's life at the moment of her beloved husband's death, where you will cross the river with her into the land of widowhood, from one stepping stone to the next, as she visits the homes and lives of each of her children. "I have four children, all scattered," Elaine says. This is the story about recollection and reconnection. In large part, she is meeting these adults for the first time. Raising their family, she and her husband had carefully "respected their children's privacy" as a reaction to their own early years as children of Orthodox Jewish immigrants living together in small apartments and sharing communal family expectations, which were both a source of pride and the basis of her career as a working artist in ceramics, and his as a psychiatrist. Accepting their children's decisions, believing they were giving them the gift of independence while she and her husband lived a life of visible devotion to each other, the messages were mistaken for indifference. To Sarah, Peter, Lisa, and Denis, Elaine and her husband seemed to need nothing but each other and their work As a result, these children proceeded to live their adulthoods in very different ways. What has changed now, as she accepts the emotionally truthful invitations of her four children, is that Elaine is the immigrant into each of the worlds of her children, and she explores the extent to which she fits into these individual homelands. Like any displaced person, she is fully realized within her own life, but that life is no longer available to her. These new experiences form the "open doors" of the book's title, through which she and her children can face their respective truths, learn to grow together, and see the differences as yet more open doors. She first visits her daughter Sandy, now Sarah, who lives in Jerusalem with her husband Moshe, who has devoted his life to Torah study. The household is bustling with children, her home business, and people from the community. Elaine is at a loss to understand her daughter's complete conversion to the religious life. She explains that Sarah's grandparents had been poisoned by all that had happened to them in Russia. She tells her, all they kept were joyless rituals . . . and the fear. They went to the synagogue to weep. She and her husband didn't want their children's lives to be darkened as theirs had been. Sarah responds that when she came to Jerusalem and experienced Shabbat with a local Orthodox family, she realized what she had been missing and what she wanted. Clearly the stories are filled with painful realizations, but Elaine risks these

Acclaimed ceramic artist Elaine Gordon has always placed her beloved husband Neil above her work and their four children with her vocation coming in a distant second. Thus when her soulmate anchor dies, she is more than just grieving; she is lost. Each of her adult children loves their mother even if she has always been distant from them. Each wants her to leave the New York City area and move near one of them. They persuade Elaine to visit them. Elaine goes to see Sarah nee Sandy and her grandchildren in Jerusalem. Next she travels to California to spend time with Peter and more grandchildren. Her third global trek is to Russia where Lisa wants to become a single mom by adopting a child. Finally, the one trip she dreads going to is New Mexico where Denis and his gay boyfriend live. Elaine's journey is on two levels: the obvious globetrotting trips to her offspring and the metaphysical journey of spiritual learning as her children, their significant others, and their offspring make solid mentors. The extended cast is fully developed but it is Elaine as the focus who holds it together. Although her revelatory transformation seems unrealistic (sort of like Ebenezer Scrooge's change), OPEN DOORS is a deep look at a person learning in her late middle ages what is important in life. Harriet Klausner