|
''Kaaterskill Falls'' is a 1998 novel by Allegra Goodman, set in a small Catskill Mountains, New York, USA, community of predominantly Orthodox Jews during summers in the mid-1970s. The location is based on the town of Tannersville, NY where Goodman spent summers with her family. Like its fictional counterpart, Tannersville at the time was a summer home for the German Jews of Washington Heights, Manhattan. ==Plot== ''Kaaterskill Falls'' spans two years (summer 1976- summer 1978) in the life of a small community in upstate New York. Most of the characters are summer residents, Orthodox Jews whose lives center around the local Orthodox synagogue. Others are year-round residents, both Christians and secular Jews, whose local roots run deep and who coexist in uneasy symbiosis with the summer people. Elizabeth Shulman, a thirtysomething wife and mother of five daughters, is growing restless with her prescribed role as a woman within the strict Kirshner sect. She conceives the dream of opening a kosher grocery to serve the summer residents of Kaaterskill. Her store is a smashing success, but Elizabeth's perceived laxity in adhering to its rabbinic certification earns the distrust of the Isaiah and Rachel Kirshner. Meanwhile, Elizabeth learns that she is pregnant for the sixth time. Elizabeth experiences a closing in of boundaries as Rabbi Isaiah Kirshner withdraws his permission for her grocery store and a new baby binds her once again to home. Ultimately, she takes a job as an assistant at a grocery store in Washington Heights (where the Shulmans live for most of the year) in order to learn the business. Another plot line revolves around strife within the Melish family. Middle-aged Andras Melish struggles with a sense of distance from his young, lively, somewhat dictatorial wife, Nina. He forges an unlikely clandestine friendship with the reclusive Una Darmstadt-Cooper. Meanwhile, teenage Renee Melish rebels against her mother's expectations for her and forms an unsuitable friendship with a gutsy Syrian girl, Stephanie Fawess. Renee also attracts the attention of a local boy, Ira Rubin. Still another plot line concerns the Kirshner rabbinic succession. The elderly, widowed Rav Kirshner is afflicted with Parkinson's Disease but remains reluctant to hand the reins of power over to his faithful but plodding son Isaiah. Isaiah's ambitious wife, Rachel, resents this, just as she resents her father-in-law's deep affection for his brilliant elder son Jeremy, who left the Kirshner sect to become a college professor. Rav Kirshner dies mid-way through the novel and Rabbi Isaiah launches a vigorous crackdown on perceived laxities within the sect. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kaaterskill Falls (novel)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|