"Written with a sharp, satiric blade...Cousins' Club reminded me strongly of Tristram Shandy." - Readers' Favorite
When a grandmother decides she's tired of being the matriarch of the least successful Jewish family in America, she begins to consult mystical, medieval texts.
Determined that their next born grandchild will be a genius who changes their fortunes, little does she know that her worries are just beginning. Convinced that no one in her clan is smart enough to raise a genius by themselves, she decides that the child will be passed from household to household to gain their collective wisdom.
A picaresque romp set in 1950's Brooklyn, Cousins' Club is a delightful escape filled with unusual events, radical rogues, cockeyed intellectuals and pie-eyed strivers. In the end, this family story begs the question: how wrong can a grandmother be?
Semi-finalist for the 2017 Booklife Prize for General Fiction
Praise for COUSINS' CLUB:
"Written with a sharp, satiric blade...Cousins' Club reminded me strongly of Tristram Shandy." - Readers' Favorite
"...a real achievement." - Publishers Weekly
Strong sales record, emerging author.
No strangers lurked near her casket or behind the hedges. No apparent or misbegotten fortune hunters. The only people not paid to be at Rose Hips’s funeral were the family members my grandmother had either cajoled or embarrassed into attending. None of them knew how to contact her sole child, Flora, missing for many years. The gravedigger could have been her ex-husband, a man no one had seen in decades. And now, they each measured how somber they should act.
“She probably died of a sex disease,” said Cousin Muriel.
“Quiet. You don’t want the rabbi to hear you. He might put it in his eulogy.”
“She died of a heart attack, like you’re supposed to,” said my grandmother Ida of her sister.
But Rose Hips, known for whistling for cabs with her pinkies tucked in the corners of her mouth, seemed too vigorous to have died from a common heart attack. Her very nickname, Rose Hips, arose from the way she danced. She moved with such abandon that her hips did not appear to be attached to her body. If she had not been wearing clothes, they would have flown from her body and circled the room. This was wildly different than the adult who as a shy girl and so thin there didn’t seem to be room enough for her intestines.
Later in life, there had been hints and rumors that Rose Hips had been involved with all sorts of men, shadows who disappeared leaving only stories without references. Some suspected she danced the hoochie-coochie, as Fern would say, with anyone. Negroes. Commies. Anyone. Rose Hips knew people talked about her, and she thought that was acceptable.
