From Publishers Weekly
Originally published in England in 1960, this is a bleak rendition of a mother/daughter love/hate relationship by the Booker Prize-winning author (see review of Our Father below). Gladys Sperber, the family "martyr," is the oldest of five "failures" who, because her mother is "too busy," virtually raises her siblings. "She would take her food when the others had eaten. . . . She would wait for their happiness before she felt entitled to her own, and she would have looked after their dying if she'd been able." The title refers to Gladys's destructive symbiotic relationship with her mother: the biblical book of Ezekiel observes that fathers eat sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. Although the novel, which covers two world wars, evokes the limited choices available to women in a man's world and is replete with manifestations of mother-daughter interdependence (an adult Gladys shares a bedroom with her widowed mother), it doesn't probe the psychodynamics of that relationship. The result is a contrived work that depresses rather than engrosses.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'Wickedly funny, mistress of a bizarre, black, adult humour.' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Her comedy is the pure melancholy of the classic clown... the final portrait of Gladys is worthy of Goya.' OBSERVER 'This is Jewish writing at its best... Coloured as it is with a rich humour, at once unsentimental and compassionate.' TLS 'For sparkle... go Bernice Rubens.' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
