Like Mother, Like Daughter - Softcover

Rose, Marcia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345375726 ISBN 13: 9780345375728

Publisher: Ivy Books, 1995

Synopsis

"A SATISFYING EMOTIONAL FIX, nicely grounded in historical detail.
--Publishers Weekly
From the author of the national bestseller Hospital comes a sweeping saga of four generations of women, played out against a passionate portrait of America in the twentieth century. LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER carries us from 1910 to the present, from "free love"in Greenwich Village to the Summer of Love in San Francisco, from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York to the fires of the London Blitz.
Here is the engrossing saga of Leah Vogel Lazarus, the matriarch of a family of women whose lives and loves become the rich tapestry of Marcia Rose's most dazzling novel....

AN ALTERNATE SELECTION OF THE LITERARY GUILD(c)

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

From bestselling author Rose (Hospital, not reviewed, etc.) comes a quasi-feminist saga of four strong women's lives from the turn of the century to the present. Abandoned at age six by her mentally incompetent mother, feisty Leah Vogel makes her own way in New York City. She has a dreary job at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, but soon meets Joe Lazarus, a handsome, smooth-talking photographer who takes her picture one night at Coney Island. The two set up bohemian housekeeping in Greenwich Village, where Leah becomes a writer and grapples with the emotional conflicts created by Joe's attachment to the concept of free love. Then comes the First World War. Leah gets pregnant; Joe dies in action without ever seeing his daughter, Joanna, who grows up to be a talented and spunky photographer. Traveling to Europe in the 1940s to photograph the horrors of war, Joanna falls madly in love with and marries the classy Peter Fielding. But life as the spouse of an English lord is none too satisfying, since Peter would rather be in bed with his male best friend than his wife, and Joanna flees to the US with her two small children. Little Timmy contracts polio and dies; his sister, Sarah, grows up to be a skilled though tortured singer. Sarah dabbles in drugs and the hippie scene for a while, then has a baby girl, Annie, whom she abandons to the care of great-grandmother Leah. Eventually, reconciliations are made all around, and the loose ends nicely tied up. Initially weighed down with clich‚s and a sluggish pace, the novel gets better as it goes along. The WW II scenes are exciting, and the author's descriptions of life on an English manor are funny and apt, though her horror of homosexuality seems outdated and inappropriate. An enjoyable, if predictable, read. (Literary Guild alternate selection) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

"You don't need a man to take care of you" is the family motto of the heroines in Rose's ( The Hospital ) new novel, a motto they all learn the hard way in order to survive. Spanning four generations and two continents, this competently crafted saga traces the lives of four strong, talented and passionate women and their relationships as mothers and daughters. Young Russian-Jewish immigrant Leah Lazarus narrowly escapes death in New York City's Triangle Factory Fire of 1910 and then joins the bohemian world of Greenwich Village. Her daughter, Jo McCready, drops out of college and establishes herself as a photographer during the London Blitz but hides her true identity and her religion in order to marry a titled British pilot. Though she finally frees herself from their unhappy union, the estrangement between mother and daughter cannot be healed. Jo's daughter, Sarah Fielding, also escapes into art; but on the brink of stardom as a singer, she lets men sabotage her career. When Sarah abandons her daughter, Annie, Leah raises the child. Independent and headstrong like all the women in her family, Annie is determined to reconcile her mother and her great-grandmother. Rose has a gift for strong characterization, though her heroines are shaped to fit the theme here--that the mother-daughter relationship supercedes any liaison with men. The narrative is sometimes slow, and a few passages veer into melodrama. On the whole, however, Rose offers a satisfying emotional fix, nicely grounded in historical detail. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ivy Books
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0345375726
• ISBN 13: 9780345375728
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 466