A Town of Empty Rooms

October 15, 2012
After a dramatic and expensive breakdown in the wake of her father’s death, Serena, the middle-aged mother of two at the center of Bender’s new novel (after Like Normal People), finds it impossible to find work in New York City. Eager for a new start, she and her husband, Dan, “encased in ice” since his brother’s death, move to the only town where he can find a job: Waring, N.C. Desperate for direction in life outside of her foundering marriage, Serena falls in with the local Jewish community under the spell of a charismatic though mercurial rabbi whose complex personality threatens to rend the congregation. Dan, meanwhile, pursues another path to social acceptance by enrolling their son in the local Boy Scouts. As Dan and Serena cope with their sinister neighbor Forrest, as well as with simmering anti-Semitism, they attempt to salvage their marriage and forge a new life in diminished circumstances. While Bender’s social consciousness is at times allowed to take over, she’s a keen observer of marriage and the psychological bonds that tie mothers, daughters, fathers, and sons. The novel excels in stirring the reader’s sympathy and outrage, even if a tendency toward poetic justice tends to weaken the effect. Bender’s first novel in more than 10 years offers an absorbing and often touching look at the struggles of an urban middle-class family to adjust to an unfamiliar America—rural, provincial, and homogenous. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME Entertainment.

November 1, 2012
Is it possible to know another person, even one you love, is the question posed in this novel by Bender (Like Normal People, 2000), which dissects a married couple in crisis. Serena, a 37-year old Manhattan mother of two small children, loses her marketing job and barely escapes criminal charges after acting out her grief over her father's death with an irrational, irresponsible buying spree on her employer's credit card. Serena's husband, Dan, who fell in love with Serena because she seemed to offer the security he lacked during a horrific childhood, doesn't understand her behavior and no longer trusts her. Serena, drawn to Dan for his sunny optimism and self-assurance, now feels emotionally abandoned by him. She barely registers that Dan is also grieving, albeit more quietly, his long-estranged brother's death. When Dan gets a job as a publicist for a small North Carolina town, the Shines and their two small children grab the chance to start over. But as culturally sophisticated, nonobservant New York Jews, they quickly find themselves isolated in culturally drab, blaringly Christian Waring, N.C., personified by the Shines' elderly neighbor Forrest Sanders, head of the local Boy Scout troop. Dan, who always yearned to be a Scout like his older brother, enthusiastically signs up his son and volunteers as Forrest's helper. Surrounded by Christians, Serena feels her Jewish identity more acutely and gravitates toward the small congregation of Temple Shalom, particularly charismatic but controversial Rabbi Josh Golden; placed on the Temple Board, she finds herself torn between loyalty to Rabbi Josh, for whom she feels genuine gratitude not to mention affection, and increasing evidence that he may be psychologically unfit for his job. Meanwhile, Dan refuses to take seriously Serena's concern that Forrest's pride in himself as a good Christian neighbor has turned into threatening hostility. The Shines both want community and intimacy, but can they achieve either together? While sometimes annoyingly myopic--Waring's African-Americans are invisible, the white Christians stereotypically one-dimensional--Bender portrays a marriage in crisis with heartbreaking accuracy.

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November 15, 2012
Lately, Serena and Dan Shine are just going through the motions. Their marriage has been suffering since Serena's father and Dan's brother both died. Adding to the struggle is their recent exile from New York City to a small town in North Carolina after Serena was caught stealing from her company. In an effort to gain some sense of belonging, Serena becomes involved with the local synagogue, which is led by a charismatic rabbi whose strange behavior both fascinates and concerns her. Dan, too, looks for a way to fill an unexplainable emptiness. He and his son join the Boy Scouts, which is led by his elderly neighbor, who seems friendly enough but becomes overly demanding and subtly discriminatory. Despite being strangers in their own home, Dan and Serena must find a way to close ranks to defend their Judaism in the heart of the Bible Belt. Bender (Like Normal People, 2000) has created complex characters in a novel that provocatively considers our basic need to connect with other people, and how very fragile those connections can be.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)