Immigrant Family Saga: Odessa, Odessa by Barbara Artson

First impressions should not be discounted: a familiar image appears in this book, facing the copyright page. The caption reads "Immigrants Arriving in New York City, 1987 Engraving". That immediately gave me pause because it obviously should have read 1887. I looked it up and found the image for sale: http://www.eonimages.com/media/dcea0dac-3eae-11e0-b7ed-db06f6888e9e-immigrants-eye-statue-of-liberty-on-way-into-new-york-harbor. It is probably available on other sites too for those who may be interested. Such an obvious error should have been caught by the editors or the author and was a clue to the rest of the editorial organization of this book.

This novel about an immigrant Jewish family has many elements – human interest, history and an overlarge dose of psychology, the last not surprising because the author is a retired psychoanalyst. The neuroses of the major characters are analyzed prominently in the book and that detracts from the impact of its emotional pull and adds too much of a clinical aspect.

The other problem with this book is the lack of editing. It doesn't flow in a natural way. It's not necessary for a novel to be told in chronological order, but this one jumps around constantly from time to time, from place to place and from character to character. That may be the reason the chapters are named and dated.

Characters tend to appear, then fade, then possibly return. For example, we read early on about Marya, the youngest daughter of the original immigrant generation. She is born nearly deaf and consequently does not learn to speak beyond unintelligible sounds. When she arrives in New York at school age with her mother, Henya, she is kept from registering because of her disability. For the most part, she recedes from the story, then reappears years later as a young woman who is actually able to hear a limited amount of language and also holds down a job. She more or less disappears again, and much later on we read about her death and how all those years, she took care of herself and amassed a substantial (for the time) amount of savings. Wouldn't it have been interesting to have had more of a story about how all that occurred?

Despite all of these shortcomings, I decided to stick with the book because I was interested in a lot of the historical and social details of the time periods it covered. In that respect, the book is very rich and appealing. It's not enough to overcome the issues that caused me to give it just two stars, but at least I learned a few new details about the plight of Jews in Czarist Russia that caused my own ancestors to immigrate.