"The Middlesteins" by Jami Attenberg

Attenberg's third novel, this was one of the ten best-selling books on Amazon in 2012; it also made the New York Times best-seller list.

It centres around Edie, a grossly obese Jewish-American woman living in Chicago but it is mostly told from the perspective of those around her: her husband who leaves her, triggering shock waves across the family, her son and daughter, her daughter-in-law who puts her own family on a strict diet, and other members of the community. In general, the women are strong-minded and determined and the men are weak and compliant, which could be regarded as stereotypical, but most of the characters are well-drawn and convincing, especially the husband, the daughter, the daughter-in-law and the grand-daughter. 

It is refreshing to read a book focused on the characters and the relationships. There is a timeline along which the story develops but the story isn't driven by a plot. This is a portrait of normal, everyday life. That's not to say that nothing happens; rather, the things that happen are part of everyday lives. The drama and the tension comes from the ordinary things that happen to all of us, from the strengths and weaknesses of the characters, and from their interactions. Although I wasn't racing through the pages, desperate to know what happened, this quiet, gentle story had more than enough to grab and hold my interest. After all, it was about day-to-day life, the mundane stuff that I and every other reader experiences all the time. I couldn't help but empathise and identify with at least some of the characters, and recognise the others. This is a book about my own experiences, my strengths, my weaknesses, my hopes and my hidden despairs.

It was enlivened with terse prose that went straight to the point, witty prose that often sparkled and sometimes made me laugh aloud, prose that could capture a description or make an original observation in a few perfectly-chosen words.

It is told from multiple, third-person perspectives in the past-tense but allowing the author to make comments, such as fast-forwarding to tell the reader what will happen in the future to that character.

Selected quotes:

• "A child should be squeezable. She was a cement block of flesh." (Edie, 62 pounds)
• "After they made love, she would lazily watch the skin that covered his heart bob up and down, fast, slower, slow." (Edie, 62 pounds)
• "They agreed that food was made of love, and was what made love, and they could never deny themselves a bite of anything they desired." (Edie, 62 pounds)
• "She ... had grown up in a town of drunks, fighting her way to the middle class while the rest of the roommates did nothing but hover there." (The Meanest Act)
• "She had no poker face. All day long she flinched."  (The Meanest Act)
• "Real adults left their homes and went somewhere to work."  (The Meanest Act)
• "She was in three book clubs but she only showed up if she liked the book they were reading." (Edie, 202 pounds)
• "His wife had made all household decisions since the day they'd married, crushing him like a nut when he offered the slightest opinion." (Middlestein in Exile)
• "With grace he offered her his love and protection, and she accepted it, tepidly, warily. It did not bring them closer together, but it did not tear them apart." (Edie, 332 pounds)
• "If her mother could adjust the color of the sky to match her own eyes, she would." (The Walking Wounded)
• "Once you really know how the world works, you can't unknow it." (The Walking Wounded)
• "Emily made a bitchy little noise, a noise she had only recently started practicing and one that would get much, much better with age." (The Walking Wounded)
• "He was pretty sure he had not failed at anything in his life, even if he hadn't really succeeded at that much either." (Middlestein in Love) Doesn't that sum up life for 99% of us?

January 2024; 272 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God