Virginia Fisher Yaffe

Carefully Taught Virginia Fisher Yaffe

Judith Reich Newman leads a conventional Jewish Montreal life. She is married to Stuart, who provides well for their five-year old twin sons, Leif and Liev, and their baby daughter, Mayanna. Judith has grown up in a small world within a big city and has not been exposed to many people different from her. Despite a relatively happy childhood and an excellent education, she remains insecure. Betsy Rowe Foley has grown up in a similarly insular environment, except that her exposure has been only to Christians, mostly Catholics. She and her husband Keith have four children. Each woman has a best friend of long standing who supports the short-sighted beliefs each possesses and perhaps even encourages them. Judith's childhood friend, Julia, represents the status quo. Her elder son is about to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah as the book opens and Julia busies herself with color schemes and wardrobe, seemingly oblivious to the outside world. Betsy's friend since infancy, Laura, was practically raised as Betsy's twin. Her nuclear family of a husband and two daughters is her first priority. Like Judith's friend, Julia, Laura sees no reason to expand her horizons. All four women struggle with their children and with their siblings. Judith's brother Jay has served time in jail. This attacks the thorny question of nature versus nurture; his three siblings have managed to keep to the straight and narrow, sometimes too narrow. To what lengths must one go to escape one's background? Jay causes Leif anxiety that is continually misinterpreted by everyone around him. By chance, Betsy and Judith meet, first at a yoga class, and then in the hallway of a hospital where each has taken her son to see a psychiatrist. An unlikely friendship springs up as each recognizes something of herself in the other. They confide in each other, much to the consternation of the respective best friends and husbands. The two families spend a long weekend at the Foley home in the country where everyone is given an opportunity to see that the stereotypical ideas each hold about the others family are mostly false. The Jews learn about the Catholics and vice-versa, but not before there has been a shooting, a golf accident, many accusations and hysterical situations. Over the course of three days, nine children interact in ways that are comical, insightful and telling. They are the next generation; can they get beyond their parents' clichés? The important point is that at the heart of it all, we are all the same. Each women changes in extremely fundamental ways and we are left hoping that in the future, all can get along in peace, respecting the differences in others without expecting everyone to be identical.