Strangers and Cousins

Starred review from June 10, 2019
Cohen’s captivating, lyrical latest (after The Grief of Others
) takes on the wedding novel and deepens it with weighty themes of death, trauma, and social unrest. While the story ostensibly confines itself to the four days preceding and the day of the wedding of flighty Clem to her more grounded college girlfriend Diggs at Clem’s childhood home in the Hudson Valley, it flashes back in time to the childhood of Clem’s great-aunt Glad, who was hurt physically and emotionally in a devastating fire in 1927. Cohen darts through the minds of dozens of wedding guests and family members, most of whom are concerned not just with the upcoming nuptials, for which no one is adequately prepared, but also with the recent influx of ultra-Orthodox Jews into the small town, where it is feared they will lower property values, gut the public education system, and make war with more liberal Jews, such as Clem’s father. By book’s end—after the theft of a wedding ring, a destructive storm, and another fire—the characters have rethought their notions of family and community. Even the most practical characters are frequently overwhelmed by spells of wild imagination and unreliable memories, adding a touch of magic. This enticing novel shimmers among its many well-defined points of view, exploring the psychic depths of a seemingly ordinary event.

Whether you enjoy this gathering of Blumenthals, Erlands, and sundry in anticipation of the nuptials of Clem, Walter and Bennie Blumenthal's free-spirited daughter may depend on whether the author's naturally fluty voice is your cup of narrative tea. In imitators, it's a timbre that easily veers over the edge into the saccharine. But while Cohen's story is whimsical, it is far from syrupy. Her narration, once one settles into it, captures the whimsy while maintaining the edge that a story with themes of bigotry and belonging, transition and tradition, demands. Cohen's fine performance as Great-Aunt Gladys Erland, whose past and present are the twin pillars on which this story stands, should win over even the most reluctant listener. K.W. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine