Folk-Rock Family Generations Clash in Seltzer’s Debut Novel

Two generations of women in a musical Jewish family negotiate fame, betrayal, and misogyny in journalist and critic Sarah Seltzer’s satisfyingly detailed debut novel.

Seltzer moves deftly back and forth through the decades from the ’60s to the ’90s as she explores the ties that bind and often threaten to break between sisters and mothers and daughters. Men play a distinctly supporting role in the novel.

In 1964, Judie Zingerman is a high school senior “trapped by her own restless need,” living with her opinionated parents in a “comfortable, claustrophobic house” in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

She and her older sister Sylvia, who returns from her college dorm for Shabbot dinners with the young male folksingers their father is fond of hosting, have long planned to perform as a duo, with Sylvia singing lead and Judie taking on harmony and songwriting duties.

Unable to wait for Sylvia to finish college, Judie, having procured some birth control pills, takes off for Greenwich Village, where she shares an apartment with a motley assortment of musicians and performs at smoky clubs.

Thirty years later, Judie’s daughter, Emma, is, to her mom’s chagrin, following in Judie’s footsteps, skipping college to go out on the road with a guitar and her friend Mae on drums, performing her own songs and some she has “borrowed” from her mother.

When at a college performance, she runs into a woman who was briefly the family au pair when Emma was 8. Emma notices that former au pair Rose is wearing a ring that used to belong to Emma’s grandmother. Her understanding of the past begins to unravel and her relationship with her mother becomes even more fraught.

Though the novel is at its heart a juicy family drama, it’s also a smart and convincing look at the music industry, both in the ’60s and the ’90s, full of references to the other musicians in the scenes that Judie and Emma navigate, and in Judie’s case, eventually abandon.

Unlike too many authors of music-themed novels, Seltzer can write a credible lyric, one that makes you wish the novel had a soundtrack. The lyrics she includes move the plot forward in intriguing directions and reveal the inner lives of her characters.

Though Judie and Emma dominate the action, Seltzer also moves into the minds of Rose and Sylvia, who stay involved in the music industry even after Judie drops out. Dave Cantor, Judie’s husband and Emma’s father—and like them, a musician—doesn’t come to life as clearly, but he does serve to shake up the dynamics among the other characters.

Seltzer doesn’t hesitate to delve into the big feelings among members of an ambitious and artistic family, and those feelings supply the emotional fuel for the novel.

She immerses her readers in a world that may be full of sound and fury, but also holds room for quiet joy.

Sarah Seltzer will appear in conversation with singer/songwriter Sally Fingerett at 7 p.m. Aug. 28 at Gramercy Books, 2424 E. Main St., Bexley. Tickets are $5 or are free with purchase of the book. More information can be found at gramercybooksbexley.com.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Generations of folk-rock dynasty collide in Seltzer’s debut novel

Source: The Columbus Dispatch