Prayers for the Living: A Novel, by Alan Cheuse
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Prayers for the Living: A Novel, by Alan Cheuse
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Prayers for the Living is a novel both grand in its vision and loving in its familiarity. Presented in a series of conversations between grandmother Minnie Bloch and her companions, Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio commentator on All Things Considered, unfolds a layered family portrait of three generations of the Bloch family, whose members are collapsing under everyday burdens and brutal betrayals. Her son Manny is a renowned, almost legendary rabbi. Respected by his congregants and surrounded by family, no one suspects that he yearns for a life of greater personal glory, but when an oracular bird delivers what Manny believes to be a message from his deceased father, he abandons his congregation in pursuit of a life in business and his entire life spirals out of control.As Manny’s fortunes rise in the corporate realm, he falls deeper into an affair with a congregant, a Holocaust survivor, his wife sinks deeper into alcoholism and depression and his daughter, traumatized by a sexual scandal at college, makes Manny the target of a plot to shatter his newly-found empire. The devoted family matriarch, Minnie, observes and recounts the tragic downfall of her family, unable to save them from themselves.
Prayers for the Living: A Novel, by Alan Cheuse- Amazon Sales Rank: #674932 in Books
- Brand: Cheuse, Alan/ Mirvis, Tova (FRW)
- Published on: 2015-03-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.90" h x 1.30" w x 6.10" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 392 pages
Review "It is a pleasure to recommend a novel this good and this wise." — Sanford Pinsker, Hadassah Magazine"Prayers for the Living troubles notions of righteousness and forgiveness, madness, and fate, providing no easy answers while still leaving readers feeling edified. Cheuse’s is a challenging and intelligent novel, replete with beauty and heartbreak, and perhaps even containing a measure of redemption." — Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreword Reviews"Cheuse’s complex approach to storytelling via conversations, letters, and prayers is so much bigger than a typical narrative, as is this provocative story." — Denise Hoover, Booklist Online"If this morally complex saga of one man's rise and spectacular fall in late 20th century America is typical of the quality of the [new] publisher's titles, its future is promising." — Harvey Freedenberg, Shelf Awareness"The tragic story...makes for an interesting, intense and unforgettable read.” — Caresa Alexander Randall, Deseret NewsPraise for Prayers for the Living:"[Prayers for the Living] deserves to live among the great novels of Jewish American experience. It is a book that bears the weight of something old, yet feels new and utterly alive at the same time." — Tova Mirvis, author of The Ladies Auxiliary, The Outside World, and Visible City (from the foreword)“‘I want the world,’ shouts William Dubin, the biographer-protagonist of Bernard Malamud’s Dubin’s Lives, raging at a life that thinks he should survive without passions. Meet Dubin’s kinsman Manny Bloch, the tormented, cursed hero of this fine novel by Alan Cheuse. At once tender and brutal, unsparing and wise, Prayers for the Living masterfully ventriloquizes not only the voices of Manny and the people he cherishes and destroys, but those of an entire America staring at itself in a cracked mirror.” — Boris Fishman, author of A Replacement Life“A tour de force of voice, character, and psychology from an American master at the height of his powers. Minnie Bloch’s tale of her family’s slow disintegration echoes Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! recast in New York and New Jersey, a search for understanding and meaning amidst the wreckage of a life gone off the rails in pursuit of the American dream.” – Christian Kiefer, author of The Animals"Cheuse enlarges the immigrant tale of aspiration and loss. His narrator, in a lyrically heightened dialect as bold and capacious as the voices of William Faulkner, propels the story toward its conclusion with a dire largeness of scope that deserves the word ‘tragic.'" – Robert Pinsky, author of Gulf Music
About the Author Alan Cheuse has been reviewing books on All Things Considered since the 1980s. Formally trained as a literary scholar, Cheuse writes fiction and novels and publishes short stories. He is the author of five novels, five collections of short stories and novellas, and the memoir Fall Out of Heaven. Cheuse teaches writing at George Mason University near Washington, D.C., spends his summers in Santa Cruz, CA, and leads fiction workshops at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.Tova Mirvis, author of the foreword, has published three novels, Visible City, The Outside World and The Ladies Auxiliary, which was a national bestseller. She has been a Scholar in Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University, and Visiting Scholar at The Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her family.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful. A Prayer for Humanity in Turbulent Times By Civis Enormously affecting and lyrically told, author and NPR book critic Alan Cheuse’s latest novel Prayers for the Living is a contemporary parable about an ancient theme--the price of human ambition. Here ambition manifests itself as an urgent and relentless drive to reach the topmost rung of the corporate ladder, never mind the cost to family, community, and spiritual faith. Set in New York and New Jersey, the narrator is Jewish matriarch Minnie Bloch, and when the novel opens she’s about to tell her friend Mrs.Pinsker “grandmother to grandmother” the story of the rise and tragic fall of her son Manny, a rabbi who gives up his spiritual calling to become head of a business conglomerate.In the preface, Cheuse notes that he was inspired by a 1970s New York Times story about Eli Black, a rabbi from Long Island who went on to head United Brands until his involvement in an international bribery scheme was uncovered, whereupon he jumped to his death from the roof of a Manhattan office building. Cheuse’s novel may be read as a commentary on the dangerous allure of corporate success, but in the imaginative leaps it takes, Prayers for the Living moves beyond pure realism and reaches for the dazzling heights of spiritual revelation: at a key moment in the book a young Manny has a vision of a pigeon he believes is speaking to him in the voice of his long-dead father, asking if he wants to be rich as well as blessed, and in that moment Manny is transformed, his hair turning “almost completely white.”Minnie narrates Manny’s story in four parts, Afternoon, Twilight, Evening, and Night, chronicling the breakdown of Manny’s marriage to his wife Maby, his affair with Holocaust survivor Florette, and his tumultuous relationship with his college-age daughter Sarah, later known as Sadie, who, outraged by what she sees as her father’s emotional abandonment, becomes obsessed with destroying everything her father has built. “It’s an old story, darling,” Minnie says at the start of the book, and indeed this is the power of Cheuse’s novel. Manny’s story is a classical tragedy played out in our contemporary era, its twists and turns made all the more poignant because it is told in the unfaltering voice of his mother Minnie, her prayers a plea not just for her son Manny, but for all of humanity in these turbulent times.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful. Eavesdropping on a Conversation Between Friends ... By delicateflower152 Narrated by the main character’s mother, “Prayers for the Living” creates a feeling in the reader that they are eavesdropping on a very personal, private conversation. Alan Cheuse portrays Minnie Bloch, as an elderly, Jewish grandmother, and yet also a very discerning woman who recognizes her son’s weaknesses as well as his strengths.As Minnie Bloch and her friend, Mrs. Pinsker, talk, Minnie Bloch relates her son Emmanuel “my Manny” Bloch’s story. A once noted Rabbi and very successful businessman, Manny witnessed his father’s tragic death. This childhood tragedy brought him into contact with the Sporen family who are harboring their own dark secrets. Married to Maby Sporen and following her father’s death, Manny becomes business partners with her brother Mordachai from whom Maby is estranged. An affair with Florette, a congregant and Holocaust survivor, leads to further turmoil in the Bloch household. One final, nuanced tragedy ends Minnie’s tale and leaves the reader feeling numb.Just as a conversation between two intimate friends would do, the narrative of “Prayers for the Living” ebbs and flows. Moving between the characters’ lives, with asides and comments by Minnie Bloch, the novel is engaging and, at times, tedious. The language, syntax, and attitudes are true to the characters’ origins and age. Developing the novel through Minnie’s biased, but brutally honest observations, Manny and his family become very human. Their flaws and emotions are real. Yet, Minnie never quite lets go and keeps herself involved in the story. “…always the poor mother takes it on her head, and where would they be without her?” and “…They want a reason, they want a mama to clean up after them.” Minnie is not above dramatizing her role in the Bloch family’s turmoil and its impact on her. “…She was tired, she slept. I was weary, I collapsed.”Divided into four sections – Afternoon, Twilight, Evening, and Night – “Prayers for the Living” is not a novel to one reads quickly. A prayer addressing the primary subject of the section follows each one and emphasizes the progression of Manny Bloch’s adult life. Each heartfelt prayer is thought provoking. Each speaks louder and more poignantly of life, love, and family than does the narrative. Each adds to the reader’s understanding of the characters.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. A noble aspiration, not quite achieved. By Thomas F. Dillingham I wish I could give this novel a higher rating, but its flaws finally caught up with and passed myadmiration, leaving me struggling to finish the final hundred pages. Alan Cheuse was a verytalented writer, a fine book reviewer and critic, and his fiction has been widely admired.In this novel, Minnie Bloch, an elderly Jewish woman who lost her husband at an early ageand has devoted most of her life since to caring for her son, Manny, as well as for hergranddaughter, Sarah/Sadie, as they pass through tumultuous decades up to the beginningof the 21st century. The narrative is "delivered" by Minnie through lengthy monologueto her friends, with detailed descriptions of the events, behavior, dialogues, and eveninner thoughts and motivations of her husband, her son, and many other characters,including her daughter-in-law and her son's mistress. The plot has some surprises, butmost of the events are foreshadowed or even mentioned in passing as Minnie's monologuesprogress. She is often funny, often wise, sometimes profound, so her lengthy monologuesdo, in fact, fit into Cheuse's characterization of them as in the Talmudic tradition. Butthere is entirely too much of them. The story proceeds very slowly at the beginning, withmany digressions about the lives of Minnie's friends and other relatives, and with theinadequately developed "life" of Manny's brother-in-law, Mordecai (nickname, Mord),who is both an agent of Manny's rise to economic and mercantile power and of hisfall from that position. Manny, who attempts to live his live as both a Rabbi, servingthe members of his synagogue and living the spiritual life of a man of God and God'sLaws, and as a corporate executive who brings the perspective of God's laws tothe corporate board room until the complexity of that place and situation no longerallows him to do so, leading to his destruction. Cheuse hopes that Minnie's narrativesof this rise and fall will carry mythic power. That is a noble ambition, but the result ismore like an excessively lengthy stretch of hearing and hearing and hearing longone-sided conversations by a saddened and weakened but still loving mother andgrandmother.In both the Foreword by Tova Mirvis and the Preface by Alan Cheuse, the reader is almost warnedagainst making negative comments. In both, the novel is ranked with works of unquestionedgreatness. Cheuse explains his choice of narrator, the grandmother, Minnie Bloch, bymentioning his own childhood experiences of hearing his maternal grandmother and theother women in his family in the kitchen talking, where they "told stories and added commentary,their inadvertent domestic version of the Talmudic tradition: biblical narrative with aninterpretive edge." He goes on to describe his narrator's "burning declaration aboutlife on earth and beyond," and he has claimed a quality of "superrealism" for thenarrative, ranking it with works by Virginia Woolf and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Mirvis also,in her Foreword, makes large, though somewhat more modest claims, for the eminenceand great humanity of this novel. Great humanity it certainly offers, but it is finallyunsatisfactory because excessively repetitive and at some points tiresomely overstated.It is usually an error to claim equality of one's own work with great names of the past.Rhetorically, such claims seem to intend to silence or preempt criticism. Most readerswill not respond positively to that kind of warning against their critical intelligence.The novel is a work of great ambition and noble aspiration--but it cannot overcomethe error of its chosen method. A good editor would and should have persuadedCheuse to trim it back--the repetitions in Minnie's narratives are not eloquent andcumulative, just irritating after too many pages. I wish I could recommend it; I do not.
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