Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman

Kaaterskill Falls Reviews

• 
  Fabian

  This "Our Town" was constructed with great care & written about simplistically. Which baffles considering how organic the characters come off as and how poetic the narrative is.
  
  The only source of symbolism is wallpaper & house panels with floral motifs. That's it. Everything else comes from the simple actions and thoughts of the 20+ characters who inhabit the titular town on the outskirts of NYC. The Jewish summer retreat of magnificent beauty is only a backdrop to the people who both suffer for and become better people because of the shared faith.
  
  There is Elizabeth, mother of 5 girls, who is negated her dream by the community's Rav, who has a prodigal son problem in Jeremy, the cold-hearted bachelor who has lost his religion while his brother, Isaiah must suffer as the obedient child no doubt suffers because of his father's wrath. Then there's Renee, a teenage girl who must please her parents & aunts (we see her future mirrored by Elizabeth & her hardships). Renee's father Andras' true loves are his sisters... not the family he's formed. There's a librarian, a hot shot investor who owns half the township, fathers, sons, wives, daughters. Everyone falls victim to the strict institutions of the Jewish faith... any deviations from it are punishable... but we also bare witness to what occurs if religion is authentic and if followers of it do the right thing.
  
  This novel reads like a journal composed of several individuals because they share many things but all of their experiences are rich & unique. It is everything but pretentious--always a treat for the cynical reader (like me!).
• 
  Elyse Walters

  Update: Kindle $1.99 special. This is an older book....but one of Allegra Goodman's great reads. I just bought it myself --and will now give my physical copy away to a friend. If 'Sara'? --Susan? Connie? Mary? others? want to consider this book for our next buddy read, I'd love to re-read this one.
  -The kindle download is a good deal today.
  ........."Kasterskill Falls" is the more interesting story than the Allegra's new release, "The Chalk Artist", in my personal opinion.
  
  .....................................................................................................................
  I'm so excited Allegra Goodman has a new book coming out soon!
  
  I read this before I was a 'Goodreads' member ---It was 'GREAT'!
• 
  jo

  i'm astounded that this is a first novel. i'm astounded that, while writing a first novel, allegra goodman didn't feel any pressure to thicken the plot and jack up the sentimentality. i'm astounded that she chose as the topic of her first novel a strict orthodox community in which nothing much happens except the tiny movements that make up life for most of us most days. and i'm astounded that so many people read and loved this novel.
  
  this seems such a non-commercial novel. there is no glossary at the end, so if your knowledge of hebrew or yiddish or whatever is as pathetic as mine, well, tough. and really, nothing happens, except, as i said, life. the little things that make us happy and make us miserable. being fourteen and losing your best friend. being thirty and wanting more without knowing what more is. being an old man whose children have irreparably disappointed you, in spite of the fact that they are solid, good people. losing worlds with the change of the seasons. finding new worlds in a serendipitous and unmomentous encounter. experimenting with life. dying. being born. fashioning happiness out of food, walks, and other people. above all, spending a whole lot of time and energy retooling your relationship with your spouse, children, parents, friends; fine-tuning the infinitely complex knowing that you'll never really get it; giving it your best shot; taking failure and mediocrity with grace.
  
  i don't know how you do it, allegra goodman, but seriously: you are my hero.
• 
  reading is my hustle

  Enjoyed this even more the second time around. This story about a small Jewish Orthodox community is remarkable. It is closely observed and breaks my heart with its many details about the human condition.
  
  Recommended.
• 
  Ann G. Daniels

  I honestly could not put this book down. I must have been up most of the night reading it, to the annoyance of my husband. When I finished I gave it to him and then he understood. I love Allegra Goodman, but this is far and away her best. An astonishing portrayal of a world so close and yet so far apart; an even more astonishing portrayal of characters so real I felt I might meet them at any moment.
• 
  Kate

  I LOVED this book and was very sad when it came to an end. I read Intuition by Allegra Goodman first. Two very different reads. While I liked Intuition well enough, I liked this one even better because of Goodman's arrow-sharp read of her characters' thoughts and feelings. I love a book that delves into the characters' inner lives, but with restraint and precision. I'm not clearly explaining why I liked this book so very much, but I highly recommend it.
• 
  Kkraemer

  This is a beautiful, intense portrait of the small and specific that reveals the grand and general. It's a series of interrelated narratives of people and families who spend their summers together in rural New York, the followers of Rabbi Kirschner. The Rav's family is there and has been for many summers, as are the families of many of his faithful Summer after summer, the families gather there, and women keep their houses carefully kosher, men commute back and forth to the city for work, and children grow up.
  
  Surrounding these summer families are people of different faiths (mostly, other Jewish groups) and the "locals," who are different from the summer people. The stories reveal lives who are living within a specific set of parameters and negotiating the space between them and with those who are outside of the group.
  
  Beautiful narratives.
  
  They reveal how all of us live both within our circles and negotiate the world beyond them, and the characters in this book are, to a person, thoughtful, good, and spiritual. Goodman is a brilliant writer who can bring the world, both inner and outer, specific and general, utterly alive.
• 
  Liz green

  I agree with Brecken in that Kaaterskill Falls is slow starting, mostly due to an over abundance of characters, which is also its greatest weakness. It is difficult to connect to the characters, and while they each have different motivations and characteristics they do not seem to become individuals. The strength of the novel is in its intriguing themes: community, obedience, dedication, abuse of power, the word, trials of faith, comparing self to others, and family. There are beautiful passages, and interesting conflict.
• 
  Brecken Cook

  Kaaterskill Falls is slow starting, mostly due to an over abundance of characters, which is also its greatest weakness. It is difficult to connect to the characters, and while they each have different motivations and characteristics they do not seem to become individuals. The strength of the novel is in its intriguing themes: community, obedience, dedication, abuse of power, the word, trials of faith, comparing self to others, and family. There are beautiful passages, and interesting conflict.
• 
  Anna

  This book actually contains some really beautiful writing. So why 2 stars? I just couldn't connect with the characters. Honestly, I felt a little overwhelmed by the number of them and couldn't seem to keep them straight. An earlier reviewer said the book was slow to start... I must agree. I forced myself to keep going. The beautiful writing is the reason it got two stars from me. It is too bad... I had high hopes.
• 
  Judy

  3.5
  
  The Rav, spiritual leader of the community, makes rulings on legal questions, dictates the standards of the community, but he is no counselor or magician to his people. It is not for him to greet them all, accepting petitions like a king on a throne. It is not for him to pull happiness out of a hat, exorcise evil, or divine misfortune in the misshapen letter of a mezuzah. He hates that kind of superstition, and has even written that he prefers doubt and skepticism to that kind of belief. For the skeptic's questions may provide a ground for learning, but the ignorant believer cannot reason. He has written this, and yet he hates both skepticism and ignorant superstition. — p 99
  
  Selected members of the community are portrayed, their hopes and fears analyzed, their doubts questioned. They all know each other, but each harbors doubts and questions. The depth to the characters carries the story. They face everyday dilemmas, no riveting or unusual events. The women are stronger than the men.
• 
  Erika Dreifus

  I *loved* this book. Just posted a review over on the Fig Tree Books blog, for a series spotlighting past winners of the Edward Lewis Wallant Award:
  http://bit.ly/2qzRBoS.
• 
  Dennis Fischman

  The first time I read this book, Goodreads did not exist. It's fitting, in a way, for me to be thinking back and wondering what my impressions would have been at the time, since so much of this book is about how to assess the past AND live for the future, and whether and how it's possible to do both.
  
  The story is deceptively simple: a set of families who spend their summers over the course of three years in the 1970's in the town of the title. Throughout the 20th century, many New Yorkers went to the country in the summer, and many of them followed the pattern set in the first chapters: men working in the city all week and rejoining their wives and children on the weekend.
  
  Some of the conflicts in the book are apparently universal, too. A woman seeks something to call her own beyond the confines of being a wife and mother. A father loves and resents his brilliant, independent older son while relying on his steady, devoted, but mediocre younger son. An older man finds he has lost interest in the younger woman he married; a teenager has a crush on another teenager who hardly knows he's there, while she obsesses about a girlfriend and panics about disappointing her parents; a real estate developer tries to win money and respect from the community and finds that one comes at the cost of the other.
  
  And yet this book is Jewish to its core, both in the rituals and rhythms of weekday and Shabbat and the way each conflict is played out. Those men coming up from the city? They are racing against the clock to make it to Kaaterskills Falls before the sun sets Friday evening. That wife and mother? With five young children, she starts a store purveying the items the men would otherwise have to schlep up from kosher markets and bakeries in NYC--only to fall afoul of the new rabbi's ideas about his own authority. That rabbi is the younger son, who becomes his father's heir, while his older brother inherits his father's intellect and his interest in worldly intellectual matters but not his father's blessing.
  
  The Holocaust inflects every story line. The father, Rav Kirshner, was a Holocaust survivor who with an iron will trained his followers to keep their concerns within Orthodox Jewish religious life (to the point that their children hardly know Israel exists--it's much too secular!), and yet he is aware that none of them now understand the world he grew up in, a world where Jews can read Schiller's translation of Shakespeare in German. The older man, Andras, is a survivor too, and he has no belief in God, but he observes the Sabbath, keeps kosher, etc., to be part of the community and to support his Argentinian wife's burning religious devotion.
  
  How can you be true to the Jewish past and be a part of the American present? How can you live a life that's entirely bounded by a community and have dreams of your own? (The non-Jewish hermit woman in the woods only shows the contrast in deeper hues.)
  
  I make it sound as if this is a book of ideas, because I'm a man of ideas and that's how I have to read it. At a completely different level, it's a set of interlocking stories about the people who live or spend the summer in Kaaterskills Falls, their secrets, hopes, and dreams. Now that I've finished the book for the second time, I will miss those people.
• 
  Katherine

  “ ‘If I don’t work with large animals, I want to expose social injustice’” (42).
  “Old voices that creaked and swung in rhythm, their long phrases like the screen door on the bungalow, closing slowly, partway, a little more, and then, with a long sigh, thumping shut” (52).
  "But in his daily studies he still strives to understand, identify, take a text to heart, to reach through the centuries of commentary, those layers of response, and grasp a meaning that is strong, believable. And when it happens, and the words unfold for him and touch his life, this is a moment of great joy. The burden of decision falls away, and he is free, for he knows what he should do" (158).
  "He has lived in this particular hierarchy all his life, moved within it as through water, slowly, but without a feeling of constraint" (203).
  "It's as if she'd been spinning and then suddenly she stopped, and the world stopped spinning with her; the trees settled back into their places, the scattered house came back together, and the tilted windows slowed and squared themselves" (217).
  "How trivial their life is. How insignificant. It is all put on. Tomorrow the week will begin. He will go down to the city and mind his business. He will work the days away, and the days will be light and inconsequential. They will slip through his fingers. They will mean as little to him as a handful of loose change" (230). Sadly perhaps, I'm identifying with Andras's view these days.
  "To believe in God morning, noon, and night. To believe in God--and not only to believe in him, but to believe he listens to prayers. What would it be like to have that reassurance? That God would take an interest, and approve or disapprove one's life. How comforting to believe that one's life is significant in that way. That it is guided by God's will, and not left to chance" (230).
  "What a marvelous object she is to them. A ship in a bottle. How did she get in there? How could she get out?" (237).
  "She smoothes the back of her skirt where it always creases from the stool" (238). What a detail!
  "'How are you? Nina told us there's been a rabbinical eyebrow raised at you'" (243).
  "...she sees the letters in the book in front of her, and her lips move, but she is muffled by her own thoughts" (247).
• 
  FoxRafer

  This was brilliant. Understated, moving, funny, warm, touching, eye-opening. Ms. Goodman so carefully introduces her characters, slowly reveals them to us, brings them to life in subtly beautiful ways. This community, whether in Washington Heights or Kaaterskill Falls, is vivid on the page. It was a joy to follow them over two years of their lives, seeing their struggles and joys, seeing the world through their eyes. I found this book to be both simple and complex, and she masterfully moves from one household to the next, naturally revealing more of everyone's part of the story in a deliberate but never boring way. I went from feeling great empathy for one character, thinking that actually they really were an awful person, and seeing them redeem themselves in my eyes at the last moment. And my heart broke for one character but seeing her find a way to heal her wounds was uplifting and inspirational. I fell in love with these people, have imagined what their lives were like after the book ended, and thoroughly enjoyed learning about a culture I had very little knowledge of before. A truly incredible book; so glad I chose to read it.
• 
  AmandaHeather

  I'm conflicted about my feelings on this book...it's very well written, with descriptive passages that do very well at expressing internal emotions and bring you inside the characters heads. You come to understand not only the people of the community in the story, but the impetus behind every decision made.
  
  However, I don't feel any different having had experienced this slice of their lives. Very little actually happened, and in the scheme ov most characters lives, the world just keeps spinning. The author is very clear about what happened when (i.e. July 1977), but the dates don't seem to have any impact on the story except in reference to one conflict in Israel. I felt plot lines were started up that didn't really resolve, but clearly the subtlety of these was what she was going for. In real life, everything doesn't just tie up neatly - but whether you'd like this book may depend on why you're reading: to escape reality or delve into it.
• 
  Amy

  This was interestng story that really didn't do anything much in terms of external plot. Most of the book takes place in the minds of the characters, mostly Orthodox jews, who are summering in Upstate New York. It offers a slice of life into a world that others might not ever see or know exists. The parts with the women were the most interesting to me and how the women followed strict laws that didn't really involve them. I wanted to see more happen, like a romance between the teenagers or the success of the kosher market. Good read for an airplane ride or chilly day.
• 
  Heidi

  I've read a couple of books by Allegra Goodman so far, and have liked them both, but this book was the superior of the two. It centers around a community of orthodox Jews who summer in Upstate New York. And that is pretty much it. Things are resolved, or are not; life-changing moments happen, or don't. Just as in real life. Nothing strange or outrageous occurs -- it is just the story of the lives of a few people that we get to know over the course of the book, a beautiful portrait of a community and families relating to one another.
• 
  David

  This novel is a portrait of a group of Jews connected to a community of orthodox Orthodox Jews who live in Washington Heights, Manhattan, New York, with a summer community in the Catskills. There is no one central character, and less a plot than a series of stories, none so dramatic in itself. However, the writing is excellent and the layers of meaning thick. The characters are neither romanticized nor turned into emotional talismans.
  
  A good read for a quiet, rainy day, which is when I read it.
  
  BTW, my college-student daughter LOVED this book.
• 
  Susan

  I look for National Book Award winners/finalists and Kaaterskill Falls did not disappoint me. What a wonderful look at a closed Orthodox community with all the well-developed characters who migrate from NYC to the Catskill Mtns. for the summer. I especially enjoyed the friendship of Jewish teenager Renee and her Syrian, free-spirited friend, Stephanie; I could not say the same for Renee's mother who did not believe in assimilation. Yet another example of the young showing us how to get along with each other. Not a fast read but a really enjoyable one.
  14 hours, 7 min ago · delete
• 
  Willow Anne

  I enjoyed learning about the lives, traditions, and beliefs of this Jewish community, and I think that this book is quite valuable because of that aspect of of it. However, the overall progression of the storyline was quite tedious to get through. It never left me wanting to go back and read more, it felt sort of...well, boring. I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from reading it, because I do think that what we can learn from it could be beneficial, but personally, the way that the information was presented wasn't that outstanding.
• 
  Dennis

  This is not what yoou'd call an action-packed book, nor one with a lot of conflict-resolution. However, it is an interesting view into a parallel universe in our modern world, one with no real desire to be much of a part of the world at large. It was like one of the principal characters implied, the he had led them from their closed world in Europe only to have them create for themselves a new world which was even more closed.
• 
  Marvin

  This disappointing book is just the kind of book I ought to like, about the tensions one faces trying to live in a community bound by faith & tradition, & the charcters live in large, committed, functional families. It had some moments, but they were too few. The book was just boring because the author neglected to tell a story.
• 
  David Jay

  The Kirschners are a sect of Orthodox Jews who live in Washington Heights and summer in Kaaterskill Falls. The time is mid to late 1970s. Engrossing, with richly drawn, memorable characters. Beautifully written.
• 
  Anita

  After reading THE COOKBOOK COLLECTOR, which I loved, I wanted to go back and read Allegra Goodman's earlier works. Though very different, Kaaterskill Falls does not disappoint. Allegra Goodman is one of those authors who the reader will follow anywhere. A wonderful book, very rich and poignant.
• 
  Taunya

  This book has no plot, does not hold my interest enough to finish it and normally I will power through no matter what! I'm halfway through it and have no investment in these characters. Bummer.