THE SOUP HAS MANY EYES From Shtetl to Chicago--A Memoir of One Family's Journey Through History

While preparing soup from her great-grandmother's recipe, Mrs. Leonard, an American Jew, imagines that her dead relatives come by to chat about how they fled the oppressive Ukraine to settle in Chicago, where they rose from poverty. The author says she cooked up this symbolic collation for her sons. At any rate, she addresses it to them. But, apparently moved by her family's story, by the universality of its life lessons, and by her own excessive literary filigree, she has decided to unleash it upon the world. Suzanne Toren, a competent performer, cannot prevent it from sounding hypocritical, pretentious, and condescending. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 02]