Michael Lowenthal

I received a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review. This was a very unusual novel for me, but rather interesting. In a way, I wondered if Pat was actually bisexual but chose a life with Stu. The things Pat had put up with for years from Stu was just unreal. Then they try to start over in Cape Cod, you can’t get more opposite of the big city than that. I think the desire for a child was more Pat’s need to be a daddy. You can see it in the relationship he has with Paula. The feeling I got was that Stu was only interested in passing down the family genes, not much more. Although, I don’t think that qualified Pat to do what he did, not only affecting his relationship with Stu, but also Danny and Debora’s. The end of the book just completely broke my heart, I felt so awful for everyone involved. This was definitely an emotional novel and one I enjoyed very much.… (meer)

The protagonist of Michael Lowenthal’s engaging novel Charity Girl is one of the 50,000 women spuriously imprisoned by the U.S. Government during WWI. This sounds like a dull premise, but what bubbles up through the setup is a spirited, sexy romp through a Boston in the grip of war fever. Frieda Mintz, a 17-year-old Jewish shopgirl, likes fast cars, handsome young officers, dances, drinking, and the Red Sox; her resistance to parental authority and independent spirit mark her as something of a proto-feminist. The details of her arrest and exile to a women’s labor house have obvious parallels to the suspension of civil rights post-9/11, but Lowenthal wisely chooses not to force a political message onto his narrative. The period setting is vividly rendered without the overabundance of superfluous detail that makes so much historical fiction headache-inducing. What stays with the reader from Charity Girl is Frieda Mintz and her thirst for life.

From THE L MAGAZINE, January 17 2007
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