Review by New York Times Review
LEAVING LUCY PEAR, by Anna Solomon. (Penguin, $16.) Beatrice -18 years old, unmarried, Radcliffe-bound - leaves her newborn daughter in her uncle's pear grove, hoping that the thieves who often steal fruit will take the child, too. Years later, in a Massachusetts in the throes of Prohibition, Beatrice is restless, stalled and grieving, when the woman who adopted the baby begins working for Beatrice's uncle, and the families' fates are entwined yet again. AMERICAN ULYSSES: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant, by Ronald C. White. (Random House, $20.) This thorough biography celebrates the virtues and contradictions of the president and general, with a focus on his success during the Civil War. In White's telling, Grant emerges as a skilled, courageous leader with a deep faith, commitment to justice and hidden wit - a corrective to images advanced by Jim Crow-era historians and other critics. THE HIGH PLACES: Stories, by Fiona McFarlane. (Picador, $16.) The high places McFarlane invokes in this collection range from the literal (paratroopers during World War II) to the divine (a pastor questioning his faith). "The narrative impulse behind these vivid tales is understandable," our reviewer, Christopher Benfey, wrote. "McFarlane's instinct as a storyteller is to let some puzzles remain unsolved." THE BRIDGE LADIES: A Memoir, by Betsy Lerner. (Harper Perennial, $15.99.) To repair a fraught relationship with her mother, Lerner begins attending her longstanding Monday bridge club - a fixture of her social life even when the author was a child. As our reviewer, Becky Aikman, put it, the memoir "makes a case for spending time together under the rules of neutrality imposed by a game, an approach to living that refrains from over-sharing and outward complaint to concentrate on the task at hand." PALACE OF TREASON, by Jason Matthews. (Scribner, $16.99.) Dominika Egorova, the synesthetic double agent introduced in Matthews's first thriller, "Red Sparrow," has returned to Russia from the West and ascended to the top ranks of the Russian Intelligence Service - making her one of the best-placed C.I.A. moles. As she fends off Iranian assassination attempts and advances from President Vladimir V. Putin, she hides secrets of her own. HOW TO BE A PERSON IN THE WORLD: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life, by Heather Havri lesky. (Anchor, $15.) The advice columnist for New York magazine grapples with such substantive issues as creative quandaries and emotional blocks. The collection, which includes both previously published and new columns, dispenses thoughtful, tough-love advice.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Growing up, Lerner (Food and Loathing, 2003) has memories of her mother's bridge club, dressed in sweater sets, arriving on Mondays for lunch and a game. The five ladies, now in their eighties, are all Jewish, attended college, were full-time homemakers, and have played together for 50 years. When circumstances send Lerner back to her childhood home, she returns to all the unresolved issues between her and her mother. Lerner decides that by learning to play bridge and getting to know the club members better, she may be able to finally understand her mother (who still pushes her buttons). As she interviews the ladies, Lerner, used to the open sharing of her generation, is at first stymied by the bridge ladies' reticence. But as she delves into their pasts (while honing her bridge game), she begins to reluctantly admire their generation's strict code of conduct and steadfast bravery. Lerner is unfailingly honest in her comments, and her insights into the mother-daughter relationship are poignant. Bridge aficionados or not, readers will be drawn into this touching tribute to a generation of women who seemingly had their priorities straight and their lives in control, at a price. Lerner's portraits may well help grown daughters facing similar struggles gain some perspective.--Smith, Candace Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This absorbing memoir by literary agent and author Lerner (The Forest for the Trees) is about the game of bridge, but it's also about bridging gaps-both the generational gap and the "personal gulf" that had defined Lerner's relationship with her mother. At age 54, due to her husband's job relocation, Lerner finds herself back in her hometown of New Haven, Conn., where her 83-year-old widowed mother still resides. Hoping to repair at least some of the rifts between them, she somewhat reluctantly re-enters her mother's life and begins attending her Monday afternoon bridge game, first as an observer and later-after taking lessons at the Manhattan Bridge Club-as an occasional participant. Along with descriptions of her bridge lessons, Lerner shares the histories of the elegantly dressed New Haven ladies who have met weekly for 55 years, women who came of age in the 1940s and '50s. As Lerner probes marriage, career, motherhood, postpartum depression, aging, death, assisted living, dementia, widowhood, religion, and sex, she discovers that although her mother and her bridge companions differ in some ways from her own generation (for example, they felt that marriage to a Jewish man trumped pursuing a career), they share common values of love and kinship. She also draws closer to her mother, gaining a deeper understanding of her interior life, including the rarely discussed childhood death of Lerner's sister. This beautifully written, bittersweet story of ladies of a certain age and era will have wide appeal. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The game of bridge provides a colorful backdrop to agent and author Lerner's (Food and Loathing) moving story of unspoken drama and reconciliation. As caretaker for her ailing mother, the author has experienced typical mother/daughter estrangements, mental health issues, and childhood tragedies. She connects with players of the Ladies Bridge Club, of which her mother was a member for over 50 years, and begins to interview informally the other participants. Chapters covering her progress as a student of the game are interspersed with emotional portraits of the women, including themes of youthful disillusionment, infertility, generational conflict, and death in the family. The Bridge Club appears to have been their support system. Though rooted in a Jewish background, the book is not parochial in the issues it raises. Well paced and engaging, the narrative occasionally relies on stereotypical generalizations about women of a certain age in its pursuit of humor. VERDICT This group memoir is profoundly personal. Capturing the pathos of seemingly ordinary lives in an entertaining way, it should appeal to readers interested in women's issues and may inspire some to take up bridge.--Antoinette Brinkman, formerly with Southwest -Indiana Mental Health Ctr. Lib., Evansville © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A woman reconnects with her mother through her bridge club. For more than 50 years, a group of Jewish women in New Haven has gathered every Monday to eat lunch and play bridge. As a young child, Lerner (Food and Loathing: A Life Measured Out in Calories, 2003, etc.) was fascinated with these ladies, who showed up with "their hair frosted, their nylons shimmery, carrying patent leather pocketbooks with clasps as round as marbles." But as a teenager, she thought these women were "square" because they "didn't work, didn't seem to get that Feminism was taking over the world.To me, the Bridge Ladies were conventional, their sphere limited to family, synagogue and community. Their identities restricted to daughter, mother, and wife. What could be more tedious? More demeaning? On top of which their idea of fun was an afternoon of playing Bridge. Seriously?" It was only when Lerner moved back to New Haven to help her aging mother that she began to understand the Bridge Ladies and their fierce loyalties and friendships that continued despite a certain level of boredom with each other. Lerner interviewed each of the women in turn, learning about their successes and failures, love interests, children, and ability to commit to one man for a lifetime. During this process, she also found ways to ask her mother about her own childhood. The author decided to learn how to play bridge, a task she found more difficult than she'd imagined. She interweaves her bridge-playing attempts with stories about the Bridge Ladies to give a portrayal of a certain sector of women who came of age before feminism was the norm. Lerner captures an era that has long since faded, but it is a time period that gave birth to today's modern woman, a fact that shouldn't be overlooked. Nostalgic stories from women who came of age before feminism and how they helped a daughter bond with her mother. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
