Crossing California

Starred review from April 26, 2004
In Chicago's West Rogers Park neighborhood in 1979, California Avenue divides the prosperous west side from the struggling east. Langer's brilliant debut uses that divide as a metaphor for the changes that occur in the lives of three neighborhood families: the Rovners, the Wasserstroms and the Wills. There are two macro-stories—the courtship of Charlie Wasserstrom and Gail Shiffler-Bass, and the alienation of Jill Wasserstrom from her best friend, Muley Wills—but what really counts here is the exuberance of overlapping subplots. One pole of the book is represented by Ellen Rovner, a therapist whose marriage to Michael dissolves over the course of the book (much to Ellen's relief: she's so distrustful of Michael that she fakes not having an orgasm when they make love). If Ellen embodies cool, intelligent disenchantment, her son, Larry, represents the opposite pole of pure self-centeredness. As Larry sees it, his choice is between becoming a rock star with his band, Rovner!, and getting a lot of sex—or going to Brandeis, becoming successful and getting a lot of sex. The east side Wasserstrom girls exist between these poles: Michelle, the eldest, is rather slutty, flighty and egotistical, but somehow raises her schemes (remaining the high school drama club queen, for instance) to a higher level, while Jill, a seventh-grade contrarian who shocks her Hebrew School teachers with defenses of Ayatollah Khomeini and quotes Nkrumah at her bat mitvah, is still emotionally dazed from her mother's death. Muley, who woos Jill with his little films, wins the heart of the reader, if not of his intended. Chicago produces a mix of intellectualism and naturalism like no other city, and Langer has obviously fed on that. His steely humanism balances the corruptions of ego against an appreciation of the energies of its schemes, putting him firmly in the tradition of such Chicago writers as Bellow and Dybek. Agent, Marly Rusoff
. (June)

Forecast:
Langer, a former senior editor at
Book magazine, paints on a big canvas, making local dramas mirror national shifts, from the rise of the Reagan Republicans to the last bloom of a vital youth culture; fans of literate, ambitious fiction will love this novel. National author tour; rights sold
to Finland, Germany and the Netherlands.

February 15, 2004
In this first novel: it's middle class vs. upper class across Chicago's California Avenue. Dubbed The (Jewish) Connections.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2004
Langer's funny, hyperdetailed, super-sized, circa 1980 debut is not about the state of California but rather California Avenue, the dividing line in Chicago's Jewish Rogers Park neighborhood between working-class and professional enclaves. With an anthropologist's eye, Langer depicts diverse households in distress and transition on both sides of the avenue as he chronicles the comings-of-age of a group of smart-mouthed, free-spirited, and creative teens. Audacious and talented Michelle and her smart, contrary younger sister, Jill, live modestly with their sweet-natured restaurant-worker father, while Larry, a Zionist "Jerusarock-jock," is the offspring of two doctors. Then there's the artistic prodigy Muley (whose imaginary cousin, Peachy Moskovich, wreaks havoc), the son of an African American woman who put her literary dreams on hold rather than accept money from Muley's conniving, white, record-producer father. The many-stranded plot evinces deep empathy for teens and a love for pop culture and involves everything from the Iran hostage crisis to masturbation, bad rock and roll, racism, a bat mitzvah, eroding marriages, and dirty tricks at the high school, neighborhood newspaper, and a teen radio show. Although Langer may have aimed for Philip Roth and landed, instead, beside David Sedaris, his novel is smart, affectionate, and uproariously entertaining.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)