Kirjahaku

Wasserstein, who won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for The Heidi Chronicles, writes of three Jewish middle-aged sisters-Sara, Gorgeous, and Pfeni-who come together in London to celebrate Sara’s birthday. Winner of the Outer Critics Circle Award. Photographs.

In the sixth volume in the seven-part series, a satire that pokes fun at the self-help industry and the legion of Americans who are political and cultural sloths guides readers step by step toward a life of noncommital inertia. By the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of The Heidi Chronicles.

Celebrated playwright and magnetic wit Wendy Wasserstein has been firmly rooted in New York's cultural life since her childhood of Broadway matinees, but her appeal is universal. Shiksa Goddess collects thirty-five of her urbane, inspiring, and deeply empathic essays-all written when she was in her forties, and all infused with her trademark irreverent humor. The full range of Wasserstein's mid-life obsessions are covered in this eclectic collection: everything from Chekhov, politics, and celebrity, to family, fashion, and real estate. Whether fretting over her figure, discovering her gentile roots, proclaiming her love for ordered-in breakfasts, lobbying for affordable theater, or writing tenderly about her very Jewish mother and her own daughter, born when she was forty-eight and single, Wasserstein reveals the full, dizzying life of a shiksa goddess with unabashed candor and inimitable style.

The sisters Rosensweig are three extraordinary Brooklyn-born Jewish women. Sara is the managing director of the European branch of an international bank, and she lives ostensibly happy, man-free-life in London with her intelligent daughter, Tess. Pfeni is an eccentric travel writer who pursues an unsatisfactory relationship with Geoffrey, a bisexual theatre director. And Gorgeous has the perfect husband and family in Massachusetts, where she pursues a "funsy" career as a radio agony aunt. When they meet up at Sara'a house in Holland Park to celebrate her 54th birthday, reawakened familial bonds cause each women to confront her past and her future. This self-exploration is sometimes painful, but the reunion is made very interesting by the arrival of the New Yorker, Merv, a furrier who takes a shine to Sara. Falling in love at 54 is not impossible, but who said it was meant to be easy?