John Sklar's Office

City of Laughter by Temim Fruchter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Quite an ambitious book for a first novel. The prose is beautiful and the story concept is fascinating. The idea of Jewish folklore messaging us in the modern world is fanciful to me but the execution is convincing, and at least interesting.
I often found myself confused between the time and space of the stories unfolding but in the end the author seems to have brought it together.
I seldom seek out reviews for books I am interested in reading or have read. In this case I went to the New York Times. The reviewer brought my feelings into focus:
"Like desire and secrets, “laughter is no controlled substance,” Temim Fruchter writes in “City of Laughter,” her brainy and richly textured debut novel. “It goes where it wants to go.” Grief, too, is hard to contain. In the wake of both her father’s death and a difficult breakup, Fruchter’s 32-year-old heroine, Shiva Margolin, attempts to unravel 100 years of tangled generational trauma in order to find inner peace. The more complicated fate she ultimately embraces makes this unabashedly queer Jewish family story a new take on our uncertain age."

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