The Middlesteins, Jami Attenberg
The Middlesteins, Jami Attenberg
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The Middlesteins
A Novel

Author: Jami Attenberg

Narrator: Molly Ringwald

Unabridged: 6 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/23/2012

Synopsis

For more than thirty years, Edie and Richard Middlestein shared a solid family life together in the suburbs of Chicago. But now things are splintering apart, for one reason, it seems: Edie's enormous girth. She's obsessed with food--thinking about it, eating it--and if she doesn't stop, she won't have much longer to live.

When Richard abandons his wife, it is up to the next generation to take control. Robin, their schoolteacher daughter, is determined that her father pay for leaving Edie. Benny, an easy-going, pot-smoking family man, just wants to smooth things over. And Rachelle-- a whippet thin perfectionist-- is intent on saving her mother-in-law's life, but this task proves even bigger than planning her twin children's spectacular b'nai mitzvah party. Through it all, they wonder: do Edie's devastating choices rest on her shoulders alone, or are others at fault, too?

With pitch-perfect prose, huge compassion, and sly humor, Jami Attenberg has given us an epic story of marriage, family, and obsession. The Middlesteins explores the hopes and heartbreaks of new and old love, the yearnings of Midwestern America, and our devastating, fascinating preoccupation with food.

About Jami Attenberg

Jami Attenberg has written about food, travel, books, relationships, and urban life for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times (London), The Guardian, and others. She is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up, and, most recently, a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You. Her work has been published in sixteen languages. She is also the founder of the annual #1000WordsofSummer project, and maintains the popular Craft Talk newsletter year-round. She lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Reviews

Goodreads review by karen on February 08, 2019

oh, jami attenberg... i ♥ the way you write. this book is like richard scarry's busytown. you and the om narr are just looking down at a scene unfolding, and you are watching everyone be very very busy. edie is busy eating herself to death, her estranged husband richard is busy trying to re-enter the......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on November 17, 2022

Tragic, human, and funny, well sort of funny. It's about a family in which the Matriarch has a serious eating disorder. She eats herself into a diabetic frenzy. Add to this, she's a very very angry person. She's mean. Her husband abandons her because he can't take her meanness and he can't watch her......more

Goodreads review by Oriana on November 25, 2012

I can't even begin to list all the interviews and articles and accolades Jami is getting for this book, which is so so so so great. I am sort of friends with her, by which I mean we're friends on Facebook and have chatted at publishing events, and she's always been really nice. But we know each othe......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on January 13, 2024

Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy this book. The Middlesteins focuses on a dysfunctional family, including Edie Middlestein, a woman who has a tumultuous relationship with food. While I think Jami Attenberg attempted to portray relational and familial angst and its complexities, so much of this book came......more

Quotes

Praise for The Middlesteins:

"I couldn't help absolutely devouring The Middlesteins. This smorgasbord of a book about food, family, love, sex, and loss is like the Jewish The Corrections, yet menschier and with a heart--and it's hilarious!"—Jenna Blum, author of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers

"The Middlesteins is a truly original American novel, at once topical and universally timeless. Jami Attenberg has created a Midwestern Jewish family who are quintessentially familiar but fiercely, mordantly idiosyncratic. This novel will make you laugh, cry, cringe in recognition, and crave lamb-cumin noodles. This is a stunningly wonderful book."—Kate Christensen, author of The Astral and The Great Man

"Jami Attenberg has a gift for making you sympathize with each and every one of her characters. The result is a rich family portrait that's sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, and gripping all the way through. The Middlesteins are every bit as complex and contradictory as your family, or mine. I'm still thinking about them long after I turned the final page."—J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Commencement and Maine

"Jami Attenberg writes with startling honesty and haunting compassion about characters caught between desire and obligation. Blunt and beautifully written,The Middlesteins peels back the layers of one family's struggle to hold together even as its members fall apart, examining the commitments and betrayals, the guilt and grievances, the wounds and recoveries. Told with great hope and humor, this is a novel about fear and forgiveness, blame and acceptance, the roles we yearn to escape, and the bonds that prove unbreakable. It's a wonderful book."—Aryn Kyle, author of The God of Animals

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