Download Rich Boy Developed By Sharon Pomerantz Provided As EPub

enjoyed this wonderful novel enormously, Robert Vishniak is born amp raised in the northeast of Philadelphia, in thes amps, in a milieu not completely unlike what my husband grew up in, We follow him as he goes out into the world i, e. , Boston, New York, ampc. The author subtly captures details of different lives amp different decades, without being obvious about it, Warm amp humanly appealing. If Marjorie Morningstar and Free Food for Millionaires gave birth, it would be Rich Boy, I read this book in a day, a dreary rainy day, The best day I have had in months, If you like escapist epic family sagas, this is great, The book is incredibly readable, fun characters, I felt Robert had less depth than I would have liked, but the plot needed to move, Fun fun fun A really excellent first novel, which follows the main character out of his lowerclass's Jewish neighborhood, to college wherein he becomes entangled with a group of friends that, unlike him, are all very wealthy.
The book is basically a character study, and it is fastpaced and pleasant to follow the main character into hiss while he makes both wise and poor decisions.
A bit of an ambiguous ending, but I truly enjoyed this fastpaced story about a very handsome young Jewish man from humble beginnings who is able to navigate through the "waspy" social stronghold of Ivy League Universities and New York society from thes through thes.
Rich Boy is a comingofage story, and it is wonderfully done, Robert grows up to poor, immigrant, pennypinching, Jewish parents in Oxford Circle, Philadelphia, His mother Stacia is stern and stingy, his father Vishniak is an overworked postal carrier, Robert is handsome and charismatic and begins enchanting girls from a young age, Much of his story revolves around his relationships with women, Robert vows to leave his parents' home and his neighborhood, wanting to escape the polarized community, He studies hard and earns himself a full scholarship to Tufts, where he rooms with an extremely wealthy young man named Tracey, Robert quickly recognizes the chasm between his world and Tracey's and becomes desperate to belong, The novel continues through Robert becoming an adult, marrying, having a child, and comes full circle at the end with the loss of his parents,
I loved Pomerantz's style, found it entertaining and believable, I loved the characters and truly enjoyed this book, I thought the ending was a little weak, didn't do much to tie it all up, just kind of ended, But it didn't affect my enjoyment of the book,
Pomerantz created a lovable protagonist in Robert, because even when he was acting inconsiderate and irresponsible, I found myself taking his side and hoping for the best for him.
Stacia, the mother was also a muchloved character, I felt Pomerantz captured the frugal, immigrant woman to a T,
On a personal side note, my father recommended this book to me at the same time he recommended Gringolandia, He gave rave reviews for both, It's interesting to me how much I didn't care for Gringolandia and how much I loved this, I tried to like this book, but the main character was a jerk, and I kept putting it down and it took me forever to finish it, I just wasnt that interested after awhile, I actually give it. dont recommend. Sharon Pomerantz's first novel, "Rich Boy" is quite a tourdeforce, I was captivated from the beginning, Her good writing encompasses excellent characterizations and an interesting plot,

Pomerantz's protagonist, Robert Vishniak, was born after WWto lower middleclass Jewish parents and raised in a working class area of Philadelphia, His parents and his mother in particular are upwardstrivers, who live a life of couponclipping and doingwithout, Robert and his younger brother are encouraged nay, forced to work after school jobs at an early age to help support the family, Barry, the younger brother is actually treated somewhat more leniently by his parents than Robert, Robert and Barry are also encouraged in their academic pursuits by their parents and Robert ends up at Tufts University in the mid's, He is a poorboy who matched with a very rich young man as a roommate, They become friends and stay involved in each other's lives til the end of the book, Through "Tracey", Robert's wealthy and dissolute friend, Robert is introduced to other oldwealth people at Tufts and Harvard, Robert is enchanted with his new friends and their lifestyle so different from his parsimonious relatives, The novel is a very good look at the differences in religion and wealth that are fairly divisive in today's America,

The latter years of the's for Robert are taken up with dealing with current events, in the form of the Vietnam War and his draft status.
Pomerantz does an excellent job taking the reader back to this time, and her depiction of the first draft lottery is rightontarget, from what I remember, Robert takes up with a wealthy British young woman, falls in love, and is devastated as the romance ends, His next few years are spent running away from his memories until he finally realises, in his late's, that the world is passing him by and he cannot spend the rest of his life in hiding from society.
He shaves his beard, cuts his hair, and enters NYU Law School, He soon settles on realestate law as his chosen profession and Pomerantz brings the reader forward with the nextor so years of Robert's life and career,

All of Pomerantz's characters are interesting, All of them. The reader might not like some of them, but I think most readers will want to know "what happens next", "Rich Boy" which is actually an ironic title for the book is a deeply satisfying read, Buy it and enjoy it, Robert Vishniak is the favored son of Oxford Circle, a workingclass Jewish neighborhood ins Philadelphia, Handsome and clever, Robert glides into the cloistered universities of New England, where scions of unimaginable wealth and influence stand shoulder to shoulder with scholarship paupers like himself who wash dishes for book money.
The doors that open there lead Robert to the highest circles of Manhattan society during the heart of the Reagan boom where everything Robert has learned about women, through seduction and heartbreak, pays off.
For a brief moment, he has it allbut the world in which he finds himself is not the world from which he comes, and a chance encounter with a beautiful girl from the old neighborhoodand the forgotten life she reawakensthreatens to unravel his carefully constructed new identity.
Robert Vishniak, the main protagonist, was born after WWin a lower middleclass Jewish family and raised in Philadelphia, His parents raised him and his younger brother, Barry, with a strong hand and did without to guide the boys in the upward direction in all ways, They were raised to be hard workers and hard thinkers, Robert manages to get into a Boston college in the midsixties, where he becomes fast friends with his very wealthy roommate, Tracey, He experiences people who come from great wealth of "old money" and lives through wonderful adventures and developes many long lasting relationships, The latter years of the's for Robert deal with the Vietnam War and his draft status, Robert strikes up a relationship with a wealthy young woman, falls in love, and is devastated when the romance ends, He spends too many years next running away from memories, He finally realizes, in his late's, that the world is passing him by and that he needs to jump back into society and live, He enters NYU Law School and chooses realestate law as his profession, This story is gripping, compelling and believable and written with dry humor and great informed intelligence, It was a total pleasure to read,
This is pure escapist fun without being trashy, The story's approach and focus reminds me a lot of Herman Wouk's Marjorie Morningstar, and more than a cut above Shaw's Rich Man, Poor Man, Highend chick lit, or in this case, ladlit, But Pomerantz has a fertile sense of place and era that wafts of historical fiction, I visualized the sensual transformation of New York City from what it was in postWW II through to the mid's, No skimping on the details of the rise of modern Manhattan, such as TriBeCa and the Upper West Side, I felt when the air was tumescent or icy, and the clack and clatter of the streets was audible, She does the same with bluecollar Philadelphia, and you can fairly smell the asthmaprovoking cleaning products of Stacia Vishniak, taste the knishes hot out of the oven, see the eyesore of onestepabovetenement housing.
The core of Robert Vishniak's ambition is tangible, primordial,

Robert Vishniak, lowermiddleclass Jew from Philly, has his eye on the big fat cherry pie, He wants to get out of his humble straitjacket and into the moversandshakers world, His brother, Barry, is five years younger and admires Robert's physical attractiveness and the benefits that go with it, Robert attends Tufts in the late's, and then finds himself in NYC after graduation, driving a cab, His brother, the perpetual student selling drugs on the side, eventually moves in with him, His best friend from college, Tracey, teeters in a sexual identity crisis, Robert glides from one clique to another with ease, even though inside he continues to have the quiet roar of desperation, He falls in love with a wealthy but tragic woman when he is still young and unsophisticated in the ways of the world, and the outcome of that affects his future countenance and attitude toward love and marriage.


The primary men in this novel are fleshed out, and the reader will be rewarded with a contoured intimacy with Robert and Barry, and to a lesser extent, Tracey.
The women are adequately portrayed, but not overly original, You read this book for its pageturning storytelling and the themea search for a sense of home, the striving to belong, and of course the whole class struggle, There's doom around every corner, and an existential angst in every home, The emotional punches are compelling, and of course there are touches of melodrama, but it isn't schmaltzy, OK, a few scenes border on schmaltz, but that's all part of the Woukishness,



A better than average beach read of a rags to riches fable, Don't aim to be transported to an exalted state of mind this novel won't revolutionize literature, But it might just put a wiggle in your day!,