In the Land of the Living

February 4, 2013
There is a quality of memory to this spiky tale of family, the second novel from Ratner (after The Jump Artist); the focus moves from person to person, event to event, with more of a sense of emotional logic—and, maybe, more of a wandering attention span—than any narrative needs. Yet there is also a feeling of remove that is impersonal, almost sociopathic; lines of characterization and emotional progress start and stop abruptly, with something like cruelty at times. This is the story of three generations of men, beginning with Ezer Auberon, a Polish Jewish immigrant working as an itinerant carpenter in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the unloving father of Isidore, who dedicates himself to becoming everything his father is not—successful and loving as a father and husband. His sons Leo and Mack face their own difficult childhoods, despite their father’s resolutions, and grow into adults with much less grace than he. The events of their lives seem slapdash at times—an uncomfortable combination of suddenly dropped plotlines and indulgent prose eddies—creating a distance that makes it hard to carry on with these unhappy men. Though the characters are objectionably flawed, they are compelling, and the bonds between these brothers and fathers and sons are convincing and raw. Agent: Einstein Thompson Agency (formerly LJK Literary Management).

January 1, 2013
Two generations of men tussle with love, medicine and fatherhood in this rambling follow-up to Ratner's 2009 debut, The Jump Artist. The heroes of this story are Isidore Auberon, who transcends his abusive Jewish-immigrant home in Cleveland to become a respected doctor, and his son Leo, who's frustrated by his inability to live up to his late father's legacy. Ratner frames the story, particularly Isidore's part of it, as a kind of modern-day medieval myth: Chapters about him have lengthy, faux-Arthurian titles ("Of Isidore's Quest for a Damosel for to Make a Home...."). Little in his story, though, seems worthy of such finery--Isidore joins the Merchant Marine, becomes a doctor, marries and settles down, events that don't quite merit Ratner's efforts to inflate them. And if the point is that Leo overestimates his father's importance, his own share of the narrative is similarly pedestrian. There are flashes of humor in Leo's adolescent anxieties about girls and getting into an Ivy League school, and the closing section in which he hits the road with his brother gets some energy from the eccentric characters they meet. But this novel is persistently, frustratingly unsteady on its feet from start to finish. Ratner (himself a doctor) fails to settle on a consistent tone, shuttling from pungent sentences to dialogue full of pop-culture riffs to melodrama to punning irony--the mood is seriocomic, but the line between what's serious and what's comic feels uncertain and uncontrolled. Max has the essential elements of a great Salinger-esque hero--bright, precocious, haunted by family--but we don't get to truly know him until a third of the way through the book, and his frustrations with dad never gain clear focus. This could be a family epic crudely whittled down or a sketch of one. Either way, this book doesn't match its ambition.

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February 15, 2013
The pursuit of happiness in America has moved from being just an aspiration to a founding mythology. In Ratner's novel, mythology is often a compelling but shackling inheritance. The narrative spans generations but focuses on Leo, the son of Isidore, whose success has taken on mythological proportions, and who was the son of the equally mythological Ezer, a Jewish immigrant, absusive father, and professional curmudgeon. Leo, like the men before him, lives in the shadow of his sire. When he embarks on a cross-country voyage with his brother, Leo broods on the fickleness of happiness that results in both tragedy and comedy (but mostly tragedy). Part rumination, part fairy tale, and part road narrative, Ratner's book paints a picture of the terrible weight of history, self-created or otherwise, that presses down on future generations. The key lesson? It takes hard work to achieve happiness, but the true work lies in maintaining it. Ratner challenges his characters to rise to the occasion. Despite a stacked deck, the glimpses stolen are worth the read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)