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    Goldberg Variations: A Novel
    Goldberg Variations: A Novel
    Goldberg Variations: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    Goldberg Variations: A Novel

    Written by Susan Isaacs

    Narrated by Suzanne Toren, Morgan Hallett, Jonathan Todd Ross and Rachel Botchan

    3/5

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    About this audiobook

    From New York Times bestselling author Susan Issacs, a “deliciously wicked” (Publishers Weekly) story of three cousins and a fortune.

    Imagine King Lear as a comedy…

    At seventy-nine, Gloria Garrison must plan for the future of Glory, Inc., the beauty-makeover business that she has grown from zilch into an eleven-million-dollar-per-year bonanza. Gloria’s never been big on family, but she’s forced to contemplate her three grandkids as objects of her largesse.

    There’s Daisy, a story editor for a movie studio; her brother, Matt, who does PR for a New York baseball team; and cousin Raquel, laboring away as a Legal Aid lawyer.

    When Gloria sends plane tickets and a weekend invitation to Santa Fe, the cousins couldn’t be more surprised. But the visit holds an unexpected twist for Gloria, too. Always sassy, smart, and wickedly witty, Susan Isaacs is at her formidable best in a novel that is both hilariously funny and a deeply moving tale of family, faith, and discovery.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateOct 2, 2012
    ISBN9781442359307
    Author

    Susan Isaacs

    Susan Isaacs is the bestselling author of eleven novels, two screenplays, and one work of nonfiction. She lives on Long Island.

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    Reviews for Goldberg Variations

    3/5

    35 ratings5 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Meh. I liked the different POVs better than I expected, but it didn't really grab me.
    • 2/5
      This book was a chore to read.
    • 4/5
      Susan Isaacs has a way with characters. I'm always interested to see how her characters evolve because they all do over time. This is a great family drama with (mostly) characters that you'd like to have in your family. The characters grow and for me, that's my favorite pay-off in a novel.
    • 3/5
      I won this book through a Goodreads First Reads giveaway. It took a bit to get into, but once the perspectives were switching up I was hooked. I love how switching perspectives shows how different characters are from each other and how different they view the same thing. I think it's a great technique but wicked hard to pull off. I'm all about characters. That's what this whole book is about, the end all be all. There's some drama, but it's rehashing and reopening old wounds. We hear about how grandma ran off, but aren't there when it happens. The consequences are all that matters. Action in this book is dinners, drives and conversation minefields. It's a weekend at a grandmother's house, which none of the three close cousins had really met before. Basically, lots and lots of talking and observations. If that's not your thing, then pass over this book. But for those of us who revel in getting to know characters and their relationships inside out and around whether or not there's action happening, this is such a good book. I don't really have any problems with the characters, or really any problems with this book at all. The characters felt authentic. The situation and reactions felt real. The settings were described well. It was finely written and the conversation lively. I love little details, which these characters offer up in spades. Each has their own take, their own little things to point out and bring up. They go on tangents and their thoughts wander about. I enjoyed it but I can see how some people would find this kind of thing tedious and boring.I think the parallels this book draws up are so interesting. Like how Gloria was treated by people when they hear the name Goldberg and how she reacted, and how Raquel was treated by people when they hear the name Goldberg and her reactions. How Matthew views Raquel as being too sensitive to racial issues, and how her perspective shows it to matter more than Matthew credits. I find these kinds of things fascinating.Based on the cover, the blurb and the fact that I've never heard of this author before probably means I wouldn't have picked this book up, if I hadn't won it in a giveaway. I'm glad I did. It's not terribly long and I appreciate the journey. The ending felt abrupt to me for some reason. I think it's a good solid book, if you are into this type of thing. It was an enjoyable quick enough read for me and because of it, I'm going to look into picking up more of Susan Issac's books.
    • 4/5
      Variations on the theme of familyI cannot honestly say that my failure to have read Susan Isaacs was really nagging at me, but when the publisher offered me a chance to review the galley of her latest, I jumped on it. I knew I was well and truly overdue. And what a pleasure this introduction proved to be. Not because it’s some major literary work; simply because it entertained me. Goldberg Variations captured my interest early with its cleverness and humor and kept me hooked through a rapid read.I should mention that I am listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variations as I type this review—a clever title for a novel about the dysfunctional Goldberg family. Other than the play on the characters’ name, is there a deeper connection to the Bach? I don’t know. Wikipedia tells me that “In music, a variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may involve harmony, melody, counterpoint, rhythm, timbre, orchestration, or any combination of those.” Something about that feels resonant to family interactions and the repeated mistakes we tend to make in our dealings with those we love… But perhaps I’m stretching.No, it’s another classic that is the seed of this family dramedy. As alluded in the novel’s description, Isaac owes a debt to Shakespeare’s King Lear. She doesn’t stretch the connection much beyond the barest premise. Her monarch is the assimilative Gloria Garrison, whose kingdom is Glory, Inc., a lucrative and thriving makeover business. Approaching eighty, Gloria finds herself estranged from everyone she was ever close to. She has no obvious heir. With some distaste, she flies the three adult grandchildren she hasn’t seen in over a decade from New York to Sante Fe and tells them:“I will choose one of you—only one—to come to Sante Fe, learn everything I have to teach about Glory, and inherit the business. I don’t believe in partnerships or co-anything. So no cousin duos, no brother-sister act. One of you will get Glory. The other two will get…nothing.”Does Gloria sound harsh? You don’t know the half of it! More on her in a moment. Back to the proposition above. When Lear threw down this proposition, it led to murder and madness. Happily, things aren’t that grim here. There is a great deal of humor at the heart of this novel, and much of that comes through the internal voices of the central characters. The novel is told through the alternating points of view of Gloria and the three grandkids: siblings Daisy and Matt, and their cousin Raquel. I found these alternating POVs a really effective way to tell the tale, to get into each of their heads as their weekend-long reunion evolves.As you may have gathered by now, this is a character-driven, rather than plot-driven, novel. At the very heart of it is Gloria—and make no mistake, she’s a monster, but a frequently amusing monster:“Not that I’m prejudiced, but I never liked short women. All too often they wrapped every work and act of theirs with cuteness. They’d say Oooh when Oh would do. They’d pin back their hair with tiny plastic barrettes as if God had not created taste. They’d stand too close to you and stare at you with their heads back, like you were a human Mt. Rushmore. True, there was a minority of shorties who shunned cute. Those were the dangerous ones you have to keep your eye on all the time. They were like those tiny sharks a diver asks himself about—These little things aren’t the ones that bite, are they?—in the instant before his arm gets ripped off his body.”Oh yes, Gloria is an unlikable character, and if that’s an issue for you as a reader, consider yourself forewarned. For me, she was over-the-top like a soap opera diva. The depth of her coldness didn’t feel very realistic, but that didn’t keep me from enjoying the tale. Her grandchildren, to varying degrees, are significantly more sympathetic, thus saving the novel from being overwhelmed by Gloria’s nastiness.In addition to family drama, Isaacs is commenting on a number of other character issues: social standing, religious identity, female empowerment, prejudice, and more. These issues are woven throughout the tale in a reasonably natural way. And at the story’s very core is the issue of reconciliation and forgiveness. Is the novel’s ending realistic? Probably not. And yet, I had absolutely no problem with the novel’s conclusion. As noted above, Gloria’s not a very realistic character—or at least I hope she isn’t. But Isaac entertained me and didn’t make me work too hard. Goldberg Variations was a great introduction to her work, and I shall look forward to exploring further.