Visit Morningside Heights. It's a fulfilling trip.
Written: Aug 04 '03 (Updated Sep 25 '03)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Elegantly written novel; captivating characters and storyline.
Cons: None. Curl up and enjoy!
The Bottom Line: This book is well-worth reading for it's excellent and elegant writing, complex characters, and interesting storyline that deftly weaves everything together. Highly recommended!
|
|
|
| randfan's Full Review: Cheryl Mendelson - Morningside Heights |
**This review will attempt NOT to reveal major plot details nor any endings.**
Cheryl Mendelson has written a slice-of-life novel with "Morningside Heights," but it so deftly created it is really unfair to label it in any way. This book is a little trickier to review, so I am going to lay it out in a slightly different way than my past reviews. I am doing so to try to convey the excellent characterization of this book without spoiling the storylines.
The Characters:
Anne and Charles: A married couple, Anne is a talented, competition-winning pianist and Charles an opera singer of minor repute whose performances still draw nice crowds. Charles and Anne didn't reach the "top" in their professions for different reasons. Their three children, Jane, a difficult pre-teen girl, Ellen, their sunny child and Stuart, their toddler are Anne's reasons. She prefers being a mother, and the fact that she has discovered she is pregnant with another child fills her with joy and anticipation. Despite the economies of living in an expensive coop and the high cost of raising children, she is happy to be having a fourth child. She'd rather be a mother than endure the rigors of practice and performing. Charles, it appears, lacks the cutthroat personality that it can take to succeed in the opera world. His personality is too calm, too balanced. He also wants his children to have a "normal" childhood, but he is less than thrilled about adding to the number of children. This creates a tension between Anne and Charles that is a subtle undercurrent throughout the book, sparking on occasion to add to the complexities of the story.
Merrit: A good friend of Anne's and to a somewhat lesser degree, Charles, Merrit is an educated woman and successful author of research and non-fiction titles. Her life, however, is filled with broken romances and unsuccessful affairs. She is pushing 40 and has discovered how much she wants to have a child. The person she seems to relate to the most is her psychotherapist and her obsession with therapy is driving Anne away. Despite Merrit's devotion to her mother (who lives in the neighborhood), she seems unanchored and unsupported, yet her character is one you will want to root for.
Morris Malcolm: one of Anne and Charles closest friends and a thorn (for reasons not revealed here or until later in the book) in Merrit's side, Morris is a geneticist who was well-known and respected in his field. But while doing research at Stanford, Morris fell victim (?) to a spurned lover and an unstable research assistant. He moves to Morningside Heights to the recently vacated apartment across from Anne and Charles and proceeds to re-integrate himself into their lives, sometimes with mixed results. His presence in the story always spurs some conflict, and Morris seems truly surprised that his presence and words have the impact that they do on those around him.
Lily: an attractive and intelligent psychotherapist who is the cousin of one of Morris' friends, she finds Morris attractive and interesting, but is unable to analyze why. Being about 15 years younger than Morris, he seems to regard her feelings as a "crush" but he has no compunction about playing on them. Lily, well-versed in analysis but seeming unable to connect analysis to her own life, seems unable to decipher Morris' actions and words. Does she love Morris? Or does her inability to analyze him make him more of a "project" than a potential mate?
Father Merriweather: He is a former lawyer, now the Episcopal priest at St. Ursula's church in Morningside Heights. He is woven throughout the story, touching the lives of Charles and Anne, Morris, Merrit and others through a unique process. A woman in his parish, long forgotten by the church, has died at the age of 103. Her apartment is the vacant one that Morris has occupied. The woman's lawyer is an unscrupulous man who has a history of stealing client's money and leaving their heirs high and dry. When Merriweather, feeling guilty about letting the woman slip through the church's fingers, attempts to find out more about he, he gets to know Charles and Anne and through them, Merrit and Morris. Their friendship leads to the discovery of a will made by the woman which leaves money to Anne, among others. The woman's lawyer appears to be using unethical methods to stand in the way of the rightful heirs, and his style intimidates Anne and Charles. But the woman's lawyer is an impediment that Father Merriweather is determined to remove, and his legal training combined with his good heart help him to forge ahead with dogged determination and try to solve the mystery of the woman's estate.
These characters, only briefly outlined her, are complex and complete. Mendelson's rich writing allows you to see inside several characters at once, getting to know each one fairly intimately. The diverging storylines have a common thread that Mendelson has deftly woven to keep the diverse group a part of the same colorful tapestry. While the characters' lives are very different, their neighborhood of Morningside Heights and parts of each of their lives touch, and you as the reader never lose sight of the connections.
"Morningside Heights" places the reader in the neighborhood of New York City that shares the name of the title. When reading the fully fleshed-out characters, you get a strong sense of their urban neighborhood, how they live in it, and why they love it so much. Their lives are as much a part of the Morningside Heights neighborhood as they are of each others. With so much suburbia and cloistered neighborhoods of today, it's very pleasing to read about a neighborhood of today that still retains the characteristics of an urban neighborhood and the people that live in it. Their lives are so interwoven on so many different levels, it is at times amazing to think one author was able to write so well on such different characters and convey them so clearly.
"Morningside Heights" offers rich descriptive prose, yet is never flowery. Word economy has been meshed with excellent descriptive and intelligent writing and the results are magical; clear pictures are painted, characters are revealed in the way of peeling an onion and removing layers to see the interior. Mendelson, who has a Ph.D. in philosophy and a J.D., has both taught philosophy and practiced law. She appears to take the best of both professions and combine them in this novel. Her insights to diverse characters, her ability to paint their portraits to readers and expose flaws in a humanizing way, and her elegant way with words combine to make "Morningside Heights" a beautiful canvas of a novel. You'll want to read it slowly and thoughtfully, savoring each word and description. This book is a treat for multiple senses.
If you'd like, please check out some of my other book reviews:
http://www.epinions.com/content_113636642436
http://www.epinions.com/content_113209609860
http://www.epinions.com/content_113144008324
http://www.epinions.com/content_110845595268
http://www.epinions.com/content_110309576324
http://www.epinions.com/content_107452403332
http://www.epinions.com/content_104334921348
http://www.epinions.com/content_103249317508
http://www.epinions.com/content_91330743940
http://www.epinions.com/content_91067551364
http://www.epinions.com/content_89177558660
http://www.epinions.com/content_88622927492
http://www.epinions.com/content_88079175300
http://www.epinions.com/content_87304081028
http://www.epinions.com/content_87096659588
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
randfan
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Location: The Beautiful MidWest
Reviews written: 143
Trusted by: 79 members
About Me:
Business calls and will be in and out for a while!
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.