FOURTH STREET EAST

Jerome Weidman, author of FIORELLO and I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE, is a charming writer, and this is an utterly winning memoir of a boyhood spent on New York's Lower East Side in the early twentieth century. Weidman shapes his material like the trained storyteller he is, giving us vivid places and characters and tales with depth and meaning. While there is plenty of grit and difficulty, and even death, in his young world, what Weidman conveys overall is buoyancy and optimism. Sam Guncler reads with intelligent warmth and a deft touch for the many tones and accents of that particular vanished immigrant world. A total pleasure. (A formatting problem, giving each story a single CD track, will no doubt be corrected in further editions.) B.G. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 03]