The author used to live in Toronto ( he has been a director and writer in England for many years) and this book is really not a novel but a series of short stories or vignettes. Rakoff uses the same families to structure the incidents and personalities that he writes about -they all live on Baldwin Street in Kensington Market in Toronto. The reader certainly learns about the poverty and hardships that these Jewish immigrants faced in the first part of the 20th century.Many struggled to maintain small grocery or fruit stores and were always in debt. The stories of the children -growing up and making a better life for themselves -and their parents who had dramatic and some times tragic histories take the reader through a mini- history of Kensington Market in Toronto. Rakoff used a mix of real and fictional names in his work. I also thought that some if not many of the stories were based on real incidents that the author may have witnessed. I enjoyed this book and think that it gives life to the history of Kensington Market. ( )