February 12, 2018
Frumkin’s sweeping debut charts the complex, broken dynamics of two very different families across two generations. Heroin addict Leland Bloom-Mittwoch witnesses the shooting of his dealer, Reggie Marshall, in 1973. Deeply shaken, he takes off with a briefcase full of cash. Following Leland’s and Reggie’s families for the next 30 years, from Ohio to Florida and back, the novel slowly reveals a network of connections and secrets among the two clans as they blame others for their hardships. Reggie’s wife raises her twin sons alone in poverty, having given up her promising academic pursuits to marry the charming but shiftless Reggie. Leland abandons his wife and the son he feels unworthy of being his namesake to start a new life in Florida. Both generations stumble through affairs, suicide attempts, economic hardships, and chemical dependence, leaving a sense of deep unease haunting every life. Frumkin structures the novel by giving each character a chapter to recount their formative years and the same crucial events. The result is a messily realistic narrative with many loose ends and too much detail about minor players, yet with a powerful sense of personal blind spots and self-delusions. Fans of puzzling, epic family sagas will enjoy the layered narrative, but the roundabout path may put off some readers.
March 15, 2018
The best way to approach Frumkin's ambitious debut, which follows multiple generations and offshoots of two Cleveland-based families, is to not get too bogged down in its complicated and mysterious plot. (And to frequently consult the two family trees that precede it.) The story opens in 1999, with Leland Bloom-Mittwich Sr. jumping from a Miami hotel roof, before cutting back to the awful night in 1973 when he and Reggie Marshall, the drug dealer he considers his friend, get horribly caught up in Reggie's boss' liquidation plan. In chapters that jump back and forth in time and adopt the perspectives of Leland Sr., Reggie, and their children, lovers, and children's lovers, Frumkin's powerfully drawn moments present themes of race, religion, and education; addiction and mental illness; sex, love, and inheritance. And if her novel's sprawl comes at the cost of its focus, Frumkin displays a real knack for creating lifelike, original characters and letting them do the talking. Readers who enjoy getting quite literally lost in interconnected stories and drilled-down character studies will happily buckle up for the ride.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)
Starred review from April 1, 2018
When a book opens with two pages of family trees, readers know to expect a multilayered, intergenerational, family epic. Frumkin's debut novel does not disappoint, following three generations of two intertwined families, one black, one white, from their roots in midcentury Cleveland to 2009, when their descendants are spread throughout the country. The story is told from multiple viewpoints, but all of the connections hinge on an explosive 1973 encounter between the fathers of both families, a drug deal gone bad. This violent episode reverberates for decades, as all cope with the fallout, obfuscated by secrets and misunderstandings on both sides. Frumkin thoughtfully delves into issues of mental illness, addiction, poverty, and racism in a story filled with penetrating insights into the human character, sensitively portraying flawed individuals from disparate walks of life. The author is particularly skilled at depicting the inadvertent harm that can be perpetrated by those trying to do good, characters who are blind to their own prejudices, and the consequences of their actions. VERDICT This ambitious saga features vivid and compassionately drawn characters, each of whom provides another piece of an interconnected puzzle. As in real life, there is no tidy outcome.--Lauren Gilbert, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from February 15, 2018
The death of a drug-addicted patriarch, and the stockpile of cash he's rumored to have left behind, has a broad impact across multiple families.Frumkin's ambitious, sensitive, and busy first novel centers on Leland Bloom-Mittwoch, who in 1999 flung himself from the roof of a Tampa hotel. He lived rough: He had a cocaine habit he routinely rationalized (he called it his "medicine") and a family he often neglected. He also possessed a briefcase full of money that was previously in the hands of a drug dealer. Cue a hunt among family, friends, and enemies to locate it. But the luggage is a MacGuffin: The novel is less a mystery than a set of character studies that make up a cross-section of contemporary America, white and black, rich and poor, cis and trans. Individually, they're remarkable portraits: Leland's second wife, Diedre, nearly 20 years his junior, is an engrossing Florida street punk; Maria, his youngest son's estranged girlfriend, was a child prodigy who at 15 was determined to "prove conclusively that the external world exists"; Natasha, who sacrificed a strict upbringing to take up with a drug dealer, is a tragic but indomitable figure. Intelligence is a common thread among the characters, which benefits Frumkin rhetorically--it frees her to riff on pharmaceuticals, music, Wittgenstein, Judaica, and fine art. But also thematically: She's contemplating how much (or how little) brains have to do with our survival when many social forces are seemingly determined to undermine it. So the novel's flaws are of the sort that afflict only writers who are swinging for the fences: complex plotting, research spilling off the pages like sap from a tree. A stronger novel would more efficiently connect its many threads (or dispense with a few), but from page to page, character to character, this is a powerful debut.Frumkin has talent to burn, and this very good novel suggests the potential for a truly great one.
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