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    Paradise, New York: A Novel
    Paradise, New York: A Novel
    Paradise, New York: A Novel
    Ebook257 pages4 hours

    Paradise, New York: A Novel

    By Eileen Pollack

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    We first meet Lucy Appelbaum, the heroine of Paradise, New York, in 1970, as a nine-year-old girl enjoying her family's Catskills hotel, the Garden of Eden. Ten years later, having found nothing else at which she can distinguish herself, Lucy tries to save the Eden by capitalizing on a wave of nostalgia for the Borscht Belt and running the hotel as a sort of living museum of Yiddish culture.

    In the course of the season, Lucy battles her grandmother's attempts to sabotage Lucy's success, her parents' superstitious fears of anything that attracts attention to the Jews, and her brother's contention that what Lucy is doing is more a matter of ego than authentic religious feeling.

    Paradise, New York explores the comforts and complexities of American ethnic identity with a charming commitment to laughter and love.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTemple University Press
    Release dateJun 25, 2010
    ISBN9781439904039
    Paradise, New York: A Novel
    Author

    Eileen Pollack

    Eileen Pollack grew up in Liberty, New York. She has received fellowships from the Michener Foundation and the MacDowell Colony, and her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, the Literary Review, the AGNI Review, Playgirl, and the New Generation. She lives in Belmont, Massachusetts, and teaches at Tufts University. She won the Pushcart Prize for her story “Past, Future, Elsewhere.”

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    Reviews for Paradise, New York

    3.5/5

    9 ratings2 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Eileen Pollack is a talented writer, but I didn't like this book very much. The premise is interesting, but I didn't find the plot very engaging, and the relationship between Lucy and Mr. Jefferson made me cringe.
    • 4/5
      Can (or should) the Borsch Belt rise again? Lucy Applebaum, scion of Catskill hotel owners, tries to resurrect her family's old and tired Eden. As she feels completely incapable of doing anything else, she defies her parents and her evil grandmother, who goes on a hunger strike when Lucy and Thomas Jefferson, the resort's skilled handyman, form a strong bond, despite the differences in their ages, races, and scholarly capabilities.The characters are, for the most part, fairly unlikeable. The guests are Jewish caricatures, the waiters are Third World ciphers, and the plot is pokey. But it does explore an unusual subject, misbegotten nostalgia.

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