A Reason To See You Again

The Cohen women—mother Frieda and daughters Shelly (“the smart one”) and Nancy (“the pretty one”)—wobble and weave their way through the late 20th and early 21st centuries in novelist and memoirist Attenberg’s (All This Could Be Yours) 10th book. With the death of the family’s patriarch, closeted Holocaust survivor Rudy, each woman goes her own way; both daughters are eager to escape Frieda’s sharp tongue and angry parenting. Math whiz Shelly heads to the West Coast to be part of the burgeoning computer scene, while Nancy gets pregnant and marries her cagey college sweetheart. Frieda moves to Miami, where she nearly drinks herself to death. Glimmers of humor lift a narrative that time-hops and head-hops, as the Cohen women come together and fall apart, squabble and make up. Nancy’s quietly rebellious daughter Jess joins the fray, ping-ponging between her aunt and her mother. Some of the many side characters seem to function mainly as plot points, especially the men, who are thinly drawn, but this only accentuates the maddening vividness of the Cohen women.