Golden Country (2006) by Jennifer Gilmore

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Golden Country (2006)

by Jennifer Gilmore

Brooklyn, New York

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 10/28

New York: 85/105

  Last twenty books for New York.. LFG!  Jennifer Gilmore's Golden Country is part of the very specific 1,001 Novels: A Library of America category of "Woman authors who wrote one or two decently well received novels about their own experience growing up or their family history in the past twenty years and the book didn't really sell and then they maybe wrote one more novel or maybe none at all and that was that."   This category maybe describes 10 to 15 percent of the close to 200 titles I've now read for this project, so it can't be ignored.

  Gilmore is squarely in this category with her novel about the intertwined lives of two Jewish-American families from the same neighborhood in Brooklyn.  Throughout this book I was reminded of the film Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, where the two characters decide to masquerade as the inventors of the Post It Note, which was actually designed by the large corporation 3M.  In the film, the characters get away with the ruse until they actually run into someone who knows the truth,  Similarly, if the reader is ignorant of the history of the Jewish mob in New York City or the story of the invention of the television, Golden Country is decently plausible, but those readers who are familiar with that history will find much of Golden Country risible. 

  Like many other titles on 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, Golden Country is filled with characters who seemingly do little else in life but hang out with family members, many of whom they actively dislike and/or are actively dislikeable.  Pages and pages of people complaining about their family situation, while exciting events take place off-stage and with no adequate description.  I'm particularly susceptible to dislike characters who are well educated, well off housewives who feel like they missed out on life because they chose to marry and raise children, and do absolutely nothing about that circumstance except complaining about it their entire lives- and this book has several of these characters.