The Blue Streak

As his colorful Jewish family gathers for his father Sam's funeral, Danny Winger confronts the conflicting images of his domineering and volatile father and his own thwarted competitive swimming career.

Having assembled a group of familiar types in this, her third book, Lesser (The Other Woman, The Shoplifter's Apprentice) sets out to explore the equally familiar theme of conflict between father and son. When hard-driving Sam Winger, a classic Type A personality, suddenly dies of what is believed to be a heart attack, son Danny has to come home and face all the unresolved conflicts in his relationship with his father. The journey home is no epic one- -Brooklyn to Long Island--but Danny's move into an apartment in the borough (seen by Sam as a return to a place he'd worked to escape) had been the cause of a bitter quarrel in which Sam threatened to cut Danny out of his will. The two had not seen each other since. While Sam Winger had been a brilliant success at everything he did, Danny had found accomplishment only in swimming, and even that had let him down when, at college, he developed tendinitis. Now working as a lifeguard at the Y, he feels a failure again. The family, a collection of conventional types--including a martyred Jewish mother; an eccentric and vocal grandmother who blames her daughter- in-law for everything; a smugly superior sister; and a slew of representative relatives--gather to mourn, recriminate, and quarrel. Danny has to identify Sam's body at the morgue--a significant moment--and the pace quickens as he learns that his father had admired him after all; that he can act as decisively as his father; that Sam had died from an aneurysm, not a heart attack- -so no need to feel guilty; and that Sam's death ``wasn't the end; it was only the start of the ride they were taking together.'' Predictable, with insights as stale as yesterday's bread, but there's enough to suggest that Lesser could be a better writer if she were less wed to the Zeitgeist. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Danny Winger, 22 and just out of college, has taken a job and an apartment that his domineering father Sam disapproves of. At dinner one night after an argument Sam threatens to disown Danny. The next weekend Sam dies. Danny, a former high-school swimming champ, goes home to Long Island to prepare for his father's funeral. In addition to dealing with his mother's guilt, his crazy grandmother's accusations, and all the other meshug ganeh relatives, Danny must confront his memories of his father, an autocrat and perfectionist. Through this experience, Danny grows in self-respect and understanding. Although this is pleasant reading, there is nothing sufficiently novel about either the story or the characters (some of whom seem to have come from Roth country) to make this an essential purchase. Buy to meet demand.
- Janet Boyarin Blundell, MLS, Brookdale Community Coll., Lincroft, N.J.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.