In Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes, author T Cooper chronicles the unusual history of the Lipshitz family, Jewish refugees who narrowly escape the bloody Russian pogroms of 1903. Upon landing at Ellis Island, Esther and Hersh Lipshitz lose their uncharacteristically blond-haired, blue-eyed son Reuven. Circumstances eventually force them to give up their fruitless search for Reuven and to join a relative living in the Texas panhandle. However, Esther never stops pondering the fate of her lost son, and when she sees a picture of the blond, blue-eyed Charles Lindbergh after his 1927 transatlantic flight, she becomes convinced that the aviator is her grown son Reuven. Esther's obsession with Lindbergh (Reuven) slowly destroys those around her and will leave far-reaching effects on the entire Lipshitz family.
In 2002 in New York City, we encounter the character T Cooper, the last living Lipshitz, who has received an unsolicited box from his estranged mother. In it, he finds clippings and letters to Charles Lindbergh and his family, all once carefully preserved by his great-grandmother Esther. When he is forced back to Texas to bury his suddenly and tragically deceased parents, T finds himself the inheritor of a family history filled with loose ends, factual errors, and maniacal behavior. An ex-literary golden boy who has quit writing to pursue a career as a bar mitzvah entertainer who impersonates the rapper Eminem, T struggles to make sense of all that came before him and, in light of his wife's desire to have a baby, what legacy he might leave behind as well.
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"As this is mostly a beautifully-written novel about a Russian Jewish family's immigration to New York City, I would have given it five stars, until the last part where the narration changes drastically and shifts from omniscient to first-person and the profanity goes through the roof. I can see why Cooper chose to do this, to show what's happening in the current incarnation of the Lipshitz family and the connections between the older generations and this last one. It's a bold choice, and one I respect for its audacity, though I still haven't decided whether it works with the story or not. But even if it does, it brings my review down to a 4. Too jarring, too different from the rest of the novel, and would have been more believable if the narrator's situation were just a little less vehemently stated. It tried to prove itself a little too much."
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Betsy (4 out of 5 stars)