Swell, Jill Eisenstadt
Swell, Jill Eisenstadt
List: $24.98 | Sale: $17.49
Club: $12.49

Swell
A Novel

Author: Jill Eisenstadt

Narrator: Courtney Patterson

Unabridged: 7 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/06/2017


Synopsis

Thirty years after From Rockaway ("A great first novel", Harper's Bazaar), Jill Eisenstadt returns with a darkly funny new work of fiction that exposes a city and a family at their most vulnerable.

When Sue Glassman's family needs a new home, Sue relents, after years of resisting, and agrees to convert to Judaism. In return, Sue's father-in-law, Sy, buys the family -- Sue, Dan, and their two daughters -- a capacious but ramshackle beachfront house in Rockaway, Queens, a world away from the Glassmans' cramped Tribeca apartment. The catch? Sy is moving in, too. And the house is haunted.

On the weekend of Sue's conversion party, ninety-year-old Rose, who (literally) got away with murder on the premises years earlier, shows up uninvited. Towing a suitcase-sized pocketbook, having escaped an assisted living facility in Forest Hills, Rose seems intent on moving back in. Enter neighbor Tim -- formerly Timmy (see From Rockaway), a former lifeguard, former firefighter, and reformed alcoholic -- who feels, for reasons even he can't explain, inordinately protective of the Glassmans.

The collective nervous breakdown occasioned by Rose's return swells to operatic heights in a novel that charms and surprises on every page as it unflinchingly addresses the perils of living in a world rife with uncertainty.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Nancy

For a book that took place over a short time span, it seemed like a very long journey. I wanted to like this book, but found it difficult to like, dislike or connect with the characters.......more

Goodreads review by Dennis

I had a Swell time reading this strange and spooky tale and returning to Eisenstadt’s quirky From Rockaway and their ensemble of characters. I’m just not so sure if I shall ever return again.......more

Goodreads review by Bridget

Swell was an easy read. It's the book you want to bring to a beach with you to read while drinking a margarita. As I just tried writing a synopsis of the plot, I realized there is not much more to the story than the summary written on the front flap. The storyline had me captivated for the most part......more

Swell is a beach read, a Rockaway tale featuring a newcomer family crashing into the turf of surfers, chinese refugees, and post- 9/11 firemen, locals you recognize, and Rose who is unique in contemporary fiction. Nobody like Rose. I found the first chapter to be the smartest, best, and most skillfu......more

Goodreads review by Megan

This was 100 percent my favorite book of the year. Real characters. Hilarious but puts you in your feelings. I would give this as a present to someone I love.......more


Quotes

"Eisenstadt's detailed and eclectic novel takes readers to a dilapidated oceanfront house full of secrets, ghosts, and an old woman's cast-off tchotchkes....In this touching portrait of ordinary people grappling with the aftershocks of 9/11--memorials, uncertainty, death, and a new life--the emotional upheaval of a national tragedy leaves no one unaffected."
Publishers Weekly

"Swell combines comedy and tragedy, chaos and a longing for order."—Hillel Italie, Associated Press


"With tremendous tenderness, Eisenstadt captures the traumatized Rockaway of the early 2000s in swirling Technicolor....A whimsical portrait of a still-raw community."
Kirkus Reviews

"In her new novel, Swell, Jill Eisenstadt comes back to Rockaway, and this visit revolves around historical events of recent decades....Swell is anchored in real understanding of the people of Rockaway, what they went through in those years and their recourse to black humor."—Newsday

"Moving, dark, and funny."—David Gutowski, Largehearted Boy

"With a pitch-perfect narrative voice and plenty of humor, Eisenstadt captures the lives of her Mets-loving and Yankee-hating characters in vivid detail."—Booklist

"Mordantly funny."
Colette Bancroft, Tampa Bay Times


"Comic, dark...layered with ghosts and guilt and demons. It plays with our notions of heroes and heroism, and jabs at our one-dimensional instinct to deify in the face of tragedy."—Casey Barrett, Village Voice