One of the things I like about having a nice (probably far too large for my living circumstances, but oh well) personal library is that when I have a reading whim, I can usually without too much effort come up with a few books, and in some cases a large stack, of reading possibilities. Name a place or a subject or a time period and I bet I can find a book to match that will be a satisfying read.
I am a slave to my reading whims, I think. Last night at the gym I had this sudden urge (and I am not even sure what prompted it) to read something set in NYC. I had a mental look through the books already in progress on my reading table and fished around in my memory for a book started but set aside, but I could come up with nothing. When I got home I started peering at shelves and stacks of books until I had at least four and then had to sit and peruse.
Of course I have had this book on my radar. One that I read years and years ago. I recall liking it, though now the details are (unsurprisingly) pretty hazy. I came across it looking for another book and made sure it was handily on top of a pile in my little bookroom, and then not long ago I brought it from my book room to my bedroom. And voila, last night it made it into that pile of four. In the end I grabbed it and dropped it into my bookbag and will start reading, actually re-reading, it later.
The book? One you may not have heard of, or perhaps had but maybe have forgotten. Carole Glickfeld's novel Swimming Toward the Ocean was published in 2002, which is probably when I read it. The novel is set in 1950s NYC about a Jewish immigrant family.
"Chenia Arnow is a Russian-Jewish immigrant in 1950s New York, a sharp-witted, Betty Grable look-alike whose accent and Old-World superstitions mask untapped passions and intellectual curiosity. Her husband Ruben is a handsome philanderer who has a knack for creating phony lawsuits. Their precocious daughter Devorah, tells–and often imagines–the richly involving story of their lives. No one expects."
It is still in print and in stock, so that will tell you something. I have good memories of it, and this is how it begins:
"I imagine my mother straightening the decks of cards, then lining up the Parchesi game with the Chinese checkers board before she takes my sister's jump rope off the closet shelf. She doesn't lock the apartment door when she leaves. In her backless slippers, she walks up two flights, clopping with each step. The door to the roof is heavy. She has to pull hard to open it. Only a few pyramids of snow remain from the storm a few days earlier, in the recesses that the sun fails to reach. My mother wears a cotton dress, short sleeves, no coat, although it's November. Thanksgiving almost. It doesn't matter that she's cold. It might help, she thinks."
Yes, I think this will do very nicely indeed. Books really do save me, in a variety of ways. I can't imagine not having a book close at hand or going even a day without reading. If you have a copy or can get a copy from your library and feel the inkling, too, please join me. I remember liking Chenia and it is time to visit her again.