Another rave by chill author Jean Hanff Korelitz The Latecomer a character driven novel optioned for a TV series, asks how can one family be so messed up?
After marriage to Salo Oppenheimer, family “meant everything for Johanna”. Enduring three miscarriages and years of agonizing fertility treatments Johanna finally “teamed with life.” Three of her four embryos were randomly implanted at an IVF clinic. Miraculously she gave birth to triplets. Harrison, Lewyn and Sally. Johanna would devote years to nurture her children. She bribed them to cajole and love them, praying they would “attach to one another”. She “enforced togetherness” with yearly family birthday photographs under the illusion her children would bond yet the only thing the triplets shared was “a mutual aversion to one another”. They despised one another from the time they were born, repudiating disdaining backstabbing belittling and repelling one another and their parents. Nothing brought them together. Who was to blame?
Was it because Johanna’s husband was emotionally distant from his brood? Granted, Salo was a troubled man. Raised in wealth and privilege from his grandparents' lucrative businesses Salo remained guilt ridden since his years at Cornell when his jeep hit a rock overturned and killed two people and injured another. Salo devoted his spare time collecting modern art. He would often leave their swanky home in Brooklyn Heights and sit in his warehouse where he stared at his considerable art collection.
Johanna knew about Salo’s psychological wounds. But believed she would be the salve to heal him. She felt “the purpose of her life would be to love him enough to relieve him of his burden”. But Salo didn’t heal. Distracted and restless Salo kept “tumbling" untouched by family life. Removed from intimacy. Ultimately the Oppenheimers became just “five humans cohabiting…never a family unit." Unsurprisingly Salo “tumbled” out of the marriage.
When all three children “departed for their own lives” Johanna an empty nester, at forty eight, revisited her fertility clinic. She hired a ”gestational carrier” and after 18 years “defrosted” her fourth embryo who would become Phoebe Oppenheimer, the “latecomer.” Far far too nosey Phoebe not only demanded answers about her late arrival but unabashedly brought to light a family secret…the African-American half-brother Ephraim Winston.
Korelitz knows how to unpack a good story. With fierce intellect and sharp wit, she addresses many au courant themes---American racism, demise of America’s meritocracy, deficiencies in liberal academia and the ancestral origins of the Oppenheimer dynasty. Korelitz takes a satiric punch (in parts bordering on invective) at the “de-semitized” liberal Jews, a theme I found a tad disconcerting.
October 5 Laurin and Ronald Jacobson
September 29 Abraham Marcadis Elliott Berger
September 30 Andrew Garron
October 1 Joseph Bobo Ann Kalter
October 2 Phil Altus
October 3 Arquimedes Silva Gonzalez
October 4 Karen Linsky Craig Kalter
October 5 Sara Ingber Rayna Sietz Maya Goldenberg
YAHRZEIT OBSERVANCES
Anna Liebowitz Medoff Allen Friedman Dan Abramovitz Minnie Phillips Fred L. Katz Pearl Berland Ed Zack Claire Billing Eugene Linsky
Isidor Garelick Louis Magid Sara Krulevitz Alan Gartzman Libby Weinstein Sam Rosenblum Zelda Young Esther Piper
If you would like to honor your loved one with a Yahrzeit Plaque, please click on the link below.
Tampa Jewish Memorial Gardens Plot space is available at the Tampa Jewish Memorial Gardens operated by Congregation Rodeph Sholom (formerly the New Rodeph Sholom Cemetery). Rodeph Sholom Members $3,000 and Non-Members $3,500 per plot. Price includes perpetual care. Interfaith family section available. Payment plans may be arranged. Please contact the synagogue office at 813-837-1911 or email at info@rsholom.org.
We send out weekly emails with event information, reminders, scheduling times, and other announcements. It's a great way to stay in touch with the community.
