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Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Rockaway by Tara Ison 189 pages



In this book a painter named Sarah spends the summer months on Rockaway Beach, NY, in the home of her best friend Emily’s grandmother.  Emily is in Connecticut expecting her third child with her very wealthy husband.  Sarah’s parents are in California, where she has also been living.  Her brother died when she was young and since then she has grown into a relationship with her parents in which her role is the parent and they have become dependent upon her.

Ostensibly Sarah is supposed to spend the summer painting in preparation for a new exhibit but her creativity is drying up and she spends a lot of her time with an older musician named Marty who shows an interest in her as a friend, but not as a lover.  He takes his Jewish religion very seriously and invites Sarah to his home and to join him and his band members on several occasions. His part in the story is never made clear to me.


By the end of the book I had developed a dislike of Sarah because she seemed to make one poor choice after another and seemed to lack direction.  I think that was the point of the story, however, to demonstrate how a person can reach their mid-thirties and have no clue what their life has meant so far, and no idea how to take the next step.

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