The Wasserman sisters couldn't be more different-but somehow, they must find a way to come together. Shoshanna, the control freak, falls to pieces in the shadow of an impending big birthday. Leah, the brilliant English professor, crusading feminist, and passionately conflicted wife and mother, faces the prospect of losing the husband she has always taken for granted. Rachel, who has papered over her losses with an athlete's discipline and a pragmatism bordering on self-sacrifice, watches her world crumble but finds her destiny in the ruins. Confronting old wounds and forging new bonds, these three daughters of a complicated, charismatic father slowly unite as a force to be reckoned with as they struggle to break their parents' silence and understand their past.
Three Daughters
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The first novel by Ms. magazine cofounder and nonfiction writer Letty Cottin Pogrebin (Deborah, Golda, and Me), Three Daughters is a story of estrangement and reconciliation. Fifty-year-old Shoshanna Safer leaves her beloved planner on the roof of her car and, retracing her steps, finds only a few pages fluttering across the Henry Hudson Parkway. "The curator of her commitments"--holder of gift lists, addresses, phone numbers, appointments, credit cards, and receipts--this planner was the lynchpin of her social and professional lives. Taking its loss as symbolic, Shoshanna turns her organizational fervor to a goal that needs no date book: the reuniting of her father Samuel, a rabbi, with his eldest daughter Leah, a radical feminist with a bristly demeanor, a Mensa-level intellect, and a fondness for the F word. Similarly, she wants to heal the breach between Leah and Rachel, the suburban sister, whose adolescent sportiness gave way to an unfashionable devotion to religion and homemaking. Pogrebin has a playful way with words, and even when she lingers too lovingly on her characters' quirks, burbling on for a few extra pages here and there, the reader isn't likely to complain. Three Daughters is an auspicious fictional debut and a great gift for sisters. --Regina Marler
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Augmenting a prolific career as memoirist, commentator and editor (she was a founding editor of Ms.), Pogrebin has crafted a first novel that embraces her favorite themes. (Her most recent nonfiction titles Deborah, Golda and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America and Getting Over Getting Older could serve as subtitles for this book.) The eponymous daughters are the progeny of Rabbi Sam Wasserman, whose impending return from Israel to the States for his 90th birthday proves a defining event for his family. Leah, the oldest, born of Sam's first marriage to crazy Dena, knows it's now or never to reconcile with her father. Brilliant and brooding, a dark star of second-wave feminism, Leah touchingly metamorphoses into a different brand of strong woman, able to appreciate and lean on her less doctrinal sisters. Rachel, the second in line, is Sam's stepchild, the daughter of Sam's second wife, Esther, who was his great love. Adopted and adored by Sam, Rachel has inherited his ardor for the Torah. As the novel progresses, she is transformed from a needlepoint-working, factoid-spouting rich man's wife into a flinty divorcee heading for the seminary. As for Shoshanna, the youngest, born to Sam and Esther, "[her] challenge was simply to accept that the woman she was was the woman she would likely remain intrepid, cautious, decent, and fundamentally content with her lot." Talky, smart, hopeful and empathic, this will be a must-read for Pogrebin's contemporaries.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
THE DRIVER OF THE DODGE CARAVAN gave Shoshanna the finger, gesticulating furiously through his windshield like the villain in a silent movie. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
THE DRIVER OF THE DODGE CARAVAN gave Shoshanna the finger, gesticulating furiously through his windshield like the villain in a silent movie. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
Format:Paperback
Pogrebin has written a novel of familial ties, ties that bind, unbind and ties that haven't quite made the transformation.
Three Jewish sisters, born of the same father struggle for identity (internal, external and religious/cultural), struggle to keep a family together in the only way they know how, whether it be positive or negative, it is the way they have learned from their parental life lessons.
Each sister is unique, within their sameness for identity search and familial bonds. One cannot understand her father, and is a rebel rouser, an antagonistical feminist, who is stuck in time and cannot seem to move forward on her life journey, one is family-oriented, living for her family, one has a career and manages her family at the same time.
Through Pogrebin's subtleties, we see that the three different personalities, in the end, have similar substance, and are more alike than they think or would like to admit.
I enjoyed reading the Jewish journeys each of them took, their treks through time, backward and forward, to learn forgiveness, to learn commitment to family, and to embrace each other and their Jewishness.
By E. Bukowsky
Format:Paperback
Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the cofounder of Ms. magazine and the author of eight works of nonfiction, has written her first novel. "Three Daughters" is about half-sisters who lead complicated and multi-faceted lives. Leah is an English professor and an ardent feminist who tends to be pedantic, opinionated and overbearing. Rachel, the mother of five, is a domestic diva with a deep interest in Jewish theology. Shoshanna is a nervous type. Like Chicken Little, she is forever afraid that the sky is about to fall.
Leah, Rachel, and Shoshanna have a stormy history, and Pogrebin demonstrates that sisterhood can be a strong bond as well as a source of resentment, envy, and conflict. Pogrebin gives these three women well-defined personalities and we see how they change over time. Illuminating flashbacks shed light on how their childhoods marked them for life.
Where Pogrebin falters is in her writing style and plot development. She indulges in melodramatic and overwrought language when understatement and subtlety would have been more effective. At a little under four hundred pages, the book goes on and on; less would have been more. The author's feminist agenda takes center stage here and she pushes it so hard that it throws the narrative out of balance. A novel should develop naturally rather than serve as a forum to deliver political statements. Finally, the book is loaded with more angst than is needed in one novel. Some of the themes in "Three Daughters" are long-buried family secrets and grudges, marriages on the rocks, child abuse, mental illness, mid-life crises, and Jewish rituals.
Who will enjoy this book? Those who like to read about dysfunctional individuals who make an effort to bond after years of estrangement may find "Three Daughters" poignant and meaningful. However, since I found this novel to be more tedious than entertaining, I do not recommend it.
By rika23
Format:Paperback
I had a very hard time enjoying this book. I felt like there was little to no character development, a meandering plot, and a completely unsatisfying ending. I haven't struggled so hard to get through a book in a long time, and the only reason I didn't just give up on it was because it was the selection for my book club. It was 240 pages before anything interesting happened, and then even that plot line was poorly followed through. I am sorry, but there was almost nothing in this book that spoke to me. I am glad I got a used copy and spent only seven dollars, but even that felt like too much.
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3.5 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great characters in a weak plot
This story is unusual in that the characters are more interesting than the plot. It was the three sisters, their lives, habits, and nuances that kept me reading. Read more
Published on July 21 2003 by Angelea
4.0 out of 5 stars
awkward, but absorbing, tale of Jewish womanhood.
"Three Daughters", the first novel of accomplished feminist and non-fiction writer Letty Pogrebin, tells the story of three sisters and their families, friends, and pasts. Read more
Published on July 6 2003 by erica
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Unbelievably SMART and LIVELY book
I rarely finish a novel and then re-open to the beginning as I did with Three Daughters. Though I've read Pogrebin's non-fiction, and found them extremely memorable, this first... Read more
Published on April 25 2003 by readernyc
5.0 out of 5 stars
deeply touching
Taking a break from my usual murder/courtroom reads, I picked up this treasure at the library. What a find! Read more
Published on Mar 27 2003
3.0 out of 5 stars
You need to be (1) from New York and/or (2) Jewish.....
This book arrived at my house from the publisher...via a book review site. Somebody goofed. The only thing I have in common with this story line is that I'm the female offspring... Read more
Published on Mar 4 2003
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't tell me, show me!
Did I read the same book as the other reviewers here? I am so sorry I bought this book instead of borrowing it from the library. Read more
Published on Mar 3 2003 by disgusted reader
5.0 out of 5 stars
Three Daughters
I laugh inside all the time, but when something makes me laugh out loud, that's usually a long overdue delight. Read more
Published on Feb 14 2003
4.0 out of 5 stars
Pogrebin has crafted a beautiful, often heartbreaking, novel
Perhaps it goes without saying that every loving parent does the best they can to make their child's life healthy, secure and happy. Read more
Published on Dec 8 2002 by Bookreporter
4.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful writing
This book is written with such compelling prose it was hard to put down. However, there were some long lapses into feminist dogma that a few times slipped over the characters'... Read more
Published on Nov 28 2002
4.0 out of 5 stars
engaging character study
To celebrate his ninetieth birthday, Rabbi Sam Wasserman returns to New York City from Israel. Sam demands that his three daughters attend his gala event even though he has had... Read more
Published on Sep 29 2002 by Harriet Klausner
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