As soon as someone is coming from New York, I automatically think I have to get dressed up.
From Susan Isaacs
With my middle-class metabolism, the suburbs were where I always wanted to be.
At the beginning, I really wanted to be home with my kid. I was a product of my generation. But in the suburbs, you are very isolated, really alone.
I was always the weirdo who wanted to have an egalitarian service in synagogue and felt I was always going against the grain.
We joined a Conservative synagogue. I began learning through engagement, rote and reading. Suddenly, I belonged... well, to the extent that a novelist can ever feel she is part of a group; we may be part of a minyan, but we're not fully merged into the community.
My first novel, 'Compromising Positions,' was a whodunit. The protagonist was a Long Island Jewish housewife who turns private investigator. But she was Jewish the way I was: lighting Sabbath candles but envying her Protestant and Catholic friends' December decorating options.
2 perspectives
1 perspectives