Synopses & Reviews
For lovers of Philip Roths
American Pastoral and Jonathan Safran Foers
Everything is Illuminated comes a mythic story of the American dream gone to pieces from National Public Radios critic Alan Cheuse. Presented in a series of conversations between Minnie Bloch and her companions,
Prayers for the Living unfolds a layered family portrait of the Bloch family, whose members are collapsing under everyday burdens and brutal betrayals.
Manny Bloch is a renowned rabbi in his community. Respected by his congregants and surrounded by family his wife Maby, daughter Sarah, and mother Minnie no one has reason to suspect that he yearns for a life of greater personal glory. But when Manny abandons his congregation in pursuit of a life in business, his entire life spirals out of control.
Told from the perspective of Minnie with a candid and unforgettable voice, Cheuses novel is both grandiose in its vision and loving in its familiarity. It is an epic story about characters caught between desire and obligation and the choices that direct our lives. A touching, engrossing novel filled with rich, funny, moving characters who inhabit a world we welcome entering.” Susan Stamberg, NPR
Review
A touching, engrossing novel filled with rich, funny, moving characters who inhabit a world we welcome entering.” Susan Stamberg, NPR
Review
Praise for Alan Cheuse's
Prayers for the Living:
I want the world, shouts William Dubin, the biographer-protagonist of Bernard Malamuds Dubins Lives, raging at a life that thinks he should survive without passions. Meet Dubins 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 Blochs tale of her familys slow disintegration echoes Faulkners 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
From previous editions of Prayers for the Living, titled The Grandmothers Club:
"Minnies story overflows with compassion and a profound sadness. Told in a language that is earthy, lyrical and never false, it is as deep and powerful and lasting as her wisdom." Publishers Weekly
It is a haunting story
A reader comes away with a sense that he has read an epic of Jewish life in America and of the sometimes tragic conflict between blessedness and wealth.” - Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
It is this seeing, a grandmothers ability to thrust herself into her sons surroundings, to soak up his past and dream her way into his future, to hallucinate a life for him, that is both the virtue and the extraordinary sting of this book
[Alan Cheuses] novel is a bitter, brilliant series of songs, heartless and tender, with a magical displacement of time and a language that rattles us and reminds us how close art and chaos really are.” - Jerome Charyn, The New York Times
In Minnie Bloch, Alan Cheuse (author of Candace and Other Stories and The Bohemians) has created a character of stunning authenticity, one whose nuances render her both lifelike and endearing
It is Minnies humaneness that emerges with aching clarity, and her abundant sympathy for all those who stumble into crucibles from which there is no escape.” - Judy Bass, The Chicago Tribune
a touching, engrossing novel filled with rich, funny, moving characters who inhabit a world we welcome entering, thanks to Cheuses loving and vivid imagination.” Susan Stamberg, NPR
What makes this novel unusual is the doting, yet perceptive, Minnie Bloch, the frame through which we view Manny's rise and fall. She surrounds Cheuse's contemporary themes with a delightfully old-fashioned sort of storytelling, as if her tales derived from the collective memory. And she attains to mythic proportions herself, becoming, by book's end, a kind of spiritual mother, viewing generation after generation of her ever fallible sons with a mixture of love and sadness
A remarkably rich and resonant novel.” Independent Publisher
Alan Cheuses conception of his subject is bold and original
and his treatment of the lives of his characters is so richly detailed and multifaceted that they become both realistically familiar and almost mythologically true. The novel, in fact, develops into an epic saga of genuinely tragic dimension. It is a fine, quite unforgettable book by an abundantly talented writer.” John W. Aldridge, critic and scholar
[Prayers for the Living] is daring, wildly ambitious, highly original, and triumphantly successful.” George Garrett
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. Cheuses is a challenging and intelligent novel, replete with beauty and heartbreak, and perhaps even containing a measure of redemption." Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreword Reviews
"Cheuses 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 News
Praise 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 Malamuds Dubins Lives, raging at a life that thinks he should survive without passions. Meet Dubins 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 Blochs tale of her familys slow disintegration echoes Faulkners 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
Synopsis
Prayers for the Living is a novel both grandiose in its vision and loving in its familiarity. Presented in a series of conversations between Minnie Bloch and her companions,
Prayers for the Living unfolds a layered family portrait of three generations of the Bloch family, whose members are collapsing under everyday burdens and brutal betrayals. Manny Bloch 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.
The novel opens at a crucial moment in Mannys life, a High Holy Day, when he questions whether he will deliver his sermon to his congregation. Manny, forever torn by his conflicting desires to serve others and achieve personal success, has been combining his rabbinical duties with work at his brother-in-laws shipping business, in part to atone for his fathers death and overcome the scars of his childhood poverty. On this High Holy Day Manny received a mandate from his father: He must do what he must do, he must go where he must go.” This sets in motion a series of decisions that will tear his already fragile family apart.
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 Womens Studies Research Center. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her family.