Summer Long-A-Coming

With this first novel, Barbara Finkelstein has given us a look inside a family deeply traumatized by one of the most irrational and devastating events in modern history. In Brantzche Szuster she gives us her spunky young heroine, a 15-year-old girl determined not to let her entire life be blighted by history. I hope I have not created the impression that this is a bleak novel. It has many passages of wry humor and sharp observation both of place and of character. I, for one, am looking forward to Ms. Finkelstein's next novel. She is a writer of subtlety and finesse, and Brantzche Szuster is a heroine for our time. I would like to know what becomes of her after this novel closes. Encore, Ms. Finkelstein! Encore!

Summer Long-A-Coming is a well written and moving account of the coming of age of one young woman, the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Her parents are emotional shells, numbed by their experiences in Europe during World War II. Their world--the insular world they have created for themselves on a chicken farm in southern New Jersey--is seen through the eyes of a bright and rather precocious girl on the brink of maturity. The complexities of family relations are rendered with great finesse. This girl's perceptions of life are very acute. We see her assessing her parents and herself, piecing together her own picture of the world. I was impressed, too, by the way the author rendered the girl's dawning sexuality. Upon meeting a boy, she knows "within a nano-second" whether or not she will ever want to kiss him. I cannot recommmend this book enough. The writing is clear and forceful, and the observation of character is deft. Let us hope that Ms. Finkelstein will give us more work of a similar calibre. In particular, I would like to see Ms. Finkelstein follow her character's subsequent life. What becomes of this bright young woman? Does she become a journalist? A public relations executive? Does she meet a handsome man in the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel in New York? There is material for a future novel here.