Household Words

October 31, 2005
Originally published in 1980, National Book Award finalist Silber's first novel gives taut insight into the the possibilities of introspection for a woman of the Greatest Generation. Unsentimental Rhoda Taber lives in suburban New Jersey with her practical pharmacist-husband Leonard and, eventually, their two vastly different daughters, Suzanne and Claire. Silber (Ideas of Heaven) follows Rhoda from Suzanne's birth, in 1940, to late middle age, episodically exploring Rhoda's "unremitting force of character" and sometimes "startling hardness." Rhoda and Leonard socialize, do some low-level schmoozing, and mundanely move along through the '40s, until Leonard dies of heart attack at 42. As Rhoda struggles to reconfigure the Taber household, words, sometimes shouted, are frequently whispered. Mostly, though, the words and the feelings behind them, both good and bad, are left unsaid. That Rhoda comes, more and more, to articulate them for herself is what gives this book its particular shape, and imparts its palpable sense of growth.

October 15, 2005
Silber's short story collection "Ideas of Heaven" was a 2004 finalist for a National Book Award. This 1980 novel, which snagged a PEN/Hemingway Award, tells the story of suburban housewife Rhoda Taber, whose secure life begins to unravel.

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