Paradise, New York: A Novel - Hardcover

Pollack, Eileen

3.68

28 ratings by Goodreads

9781566396578: Paradise, New York: A Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1566396573 ISBN 13: 9781566396578

Publisher: Temple University Press, 1998

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Trying to keep her family's Catskill resort solvent, Lucy Appelbaum copes with interference from her family, incensed at her love for a black handyman, from a nearby Hasid, from elderly Communists leading a hotel strike, and from her opinionated staff. UP.

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From the Publisher:

A funny and moving first novel of nostalgia for Catskills hotel life.

From the Inside Flap:

We first meet Lucy Appelbaum, the heroine of Paradise, New York, in 1970, as a nine-year-old girl enjoying her family's Catskills hotel, the Garden of Eden. Ten years later, having found nothing else at which she can distinguish herself, Lucy tries to save the Eden by capitalizing on a wave of nostalgia for the Borscht Belt and running the hotel as a sort of living museum of Yiddish culture.

In the course of the season, Lucy battles her grandmother's attempts to sabotage Lucy's success, her parent's superstitious fears of anything that attracts attention to the Jews, and her brother's contention that what Lucy is doing is more a matter of ego than authentic religious feeling. In the meantime, Lucy comes to realize her love for Mr. Jefferson, the hotel's longtime black handyman, and begins to face the barriers that stand between them.

On top of all this, Lucy must contend with a Hasid who buys the chicken farm next door; a cell of ancient Jewish Communists who instigate a strike among Eden's overworked young staff; a gay chef and gay baker who want to prove to the world that kosher cuisine can satisfy the most sophisticated gourmet; and Jimmy Kilcoin -- an Irish Catholic insurance adjustor known as "the Don Juan of the Catskills" -- who is determined to seduce Lucy before summer's end.

Paradise, New York explores the comforts and complexities of American ethnic identity with a charming commitment to laughter and love.

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