NOT OUR KIND

A freak cab accident on Park Avenue complicates the lives of Eleanor Moskowitz, an intelligent, articulate Jewish girl, and Patricia Bellamy, a wealthy, class-conscious WASP. Narrator Tavia Gilbert does some remarkable vocal calisthenics, creating a full cast of multidimensional characters in 1947 New York City. Gilbert captures the sound and feel of the postwar period, with its anti-Semitism, classism, and sexism. When Eleanor accepts a position as tutor to Margeaux, the Bellamy daughter, a polio survivor, Gilbert delivers a teenager who is whiny one moment and solid the next. Her male characters are well drawn, offering identifiably different voices for Patricia's brother, Tom, and husband, Win. Eleanor's immigrant mother, a milliner, is treated with respect, her accent bearing no trace of caricature. Gilbert weaves the novel's complicated relationships into a compelling tapestry. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2018]