Union Square - Softcover

Tax, Meredith

4.14

28 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380709066 ISBN 13: 9780380709069

Publisher: Avon Books, 1990

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The lives of four women--labor unionist Sarah Levy; her fashion designer sister, Ruby; bohemian, pleasure-loving Rachel Sloate; and Tish, an expatriate--are set against the colorful, turbulent backdrop of 1920s and 1930s New York and Europe

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From Publishers Weekly:

Its ambitious background notwithstanding, this hefty historical-political novel chats along in a cosy, familial tone, reducing cosmic problems to life-size proportions. The reader is tossed slam-bang into a mostly Russian-born family of socialist workers and confirmed Marxists, forced by pogroms to flee to America's lower East Side, where their political divisiveness continues. Although we follow with interest the fortunes of various inlawsamong them the Berliners, wealthy German-Jewish owners of a department storethe focus is on Hannah and Moyshe Levy and their daughter Sarah, who has married Marxist apologist Avi Spector. The ideological rift between the Levys and the Spectors widens when, at the onset of the Depression, Moyshe sides with the Bundists while Avi supports the Stalinists. As Sarah campaigns for unions and women's right to decent pay, her sister Ruby, married to Ben Berliner, becomes a force in the fashion industry. Woven into the fabric of domestic activism is the dream of a Jewish state in Palestine. At the same time, polemical art, modeled on Guernica and the Diego Rivera murals, begins to blossom and to provide an outlet for the fiercely suppressed memories of murder in the Pale. While the narrative is sometimes disjointed and the characters stereotypical, the breadth and drama of history help to create an engrossing story.
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Review:

"[Union Square] is accessible and entertaining and combines romance, family life, fashion and politics without condescension... The novel's special texture comes from a zesty, downtown, left-wing reading of events... Gritty [and] satisfying." -- Eden Ross Lipson, New York Times Book Review "Like Rivington Street, Union Square is a good read. It's juicy, fast-paced, full of scrumptious descriptions of food, fashion, glamorous living, romance. But that's not what makes it worth reading... [Tax] sees these details as part of a panorama of American history--political, social and, most profoundly, feminist history... Tax's achievement in Union Square is impressive." -- Elayne Rapping, The Nation "Meredith Tax does something different, something revolutionary. She brings women's history to life in the characters and events of her narrative... A historical novel that is, in itself, a satisfying bonbon of a book." -- Lillian S. Robinson, Women's Review of Books

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