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sujuv's review
4.0
I read "Shakespeare's Kitchen" right before this (by the same author) and while I found it eminently readable, I didn't find it memorable. But I'd heard that "Her First American" was a modern classic and so I jumped in.
It's a terrific book. There's not much in the way of plot. It's ultimately a character study - primarily of Carter Bayoux (the titular first American). He's a big, brash, brilliant, middle-aged, alcoholic, black intellectual in post WWII New York. The book focuses on his relationship with Ilka, a young, Jewish refugee from Vienna who is desperate to find the real America and her place in it, and finds it in Carter.
What's remarkable is first how real it feels (of course I wasn't there so what do I know), but also how it addresses issues of race and religion and never dismisses them but somehow never makes them central to the story, either. It's not about a Jewish woman and a black man overcoming the prejudices against their being together - though they do encounter those - but about two people who truly love one another and provide each other with something of value in the course of their relationship. Well worth reading.
It's a terrific book. There's not much in the way of plot. It's ultimately a character study - primarily of Carter Bayoux (the titular first American). He's a big, brash, brilliant, middle-aged, alcoholic, black intellectual in post WWII New York. The book focuses on his relationship with Ilka, a young, Jewish refugee from Vienna who is desperate to find the real America and her place in it, and finds it in Carter.
What's remarkable is first how real it feels (of course I wasn't there so what do I know), but also how it addresses issues of race and religion and never dismisses them but somehow never makes them central to the story, either. It's not about a Jewish woman and a black man overcoming the prejudices against their being together - though they do encounter those - but about two people who truly love one another and provide each other with something of value in the course of their relationship. Well worth reading.
kathryndouglas's review
1.0
I can't tell you a single thing that happened in this book. It was so terribly boring that I want to use it as paper towels because then at least it'll absorb something because it didn't absorb me.
haaris's review
4.0
Well-written. It's about a young Jewish woman from Vienna who reaches America in the 1950s. The story is about what's lost in translation, and what isn't, about race relations; ultimately, it's a love story but not a happy one even though it's peppered with comedy. The general arc of the narrative bends towards a sad ending and raises questions about what we give and take in a relationship and how we change as a consequence.
jeremyhornik's review
4.0
Lore Segal... sigh. She's so good. She's sort of like Grace Paley... they both have this amazing ability to take these beautiful situations, drawn carefully from life, and surround them with so much oxygen that you get heady thinking about them. They both make thoughts happen in your head.
So this one, my first Lore Segal grownup book, is about a new immigrant, a Jew from Vienna who has a long friendship/love affair with a vividly decaying black intellectual at least twice her age. The book covers years, and is about race, religion, love, friendship, guilt, being in a new country and learning English. It tastes so good, you won't believe it could be this nutritious as well.
So this one, my first Lore Segal grownup book, is about a new immigrant, a Jew from Vienna who has a long friendship/love affair with a vividly decaying black intellectual at least twice her age. The book covers years, and is about race, religion, love, friendship, guilt, being in a new country and learning English. It tastes so good, you won't believe it could be this nutritious as well.
nite's review
dark
funny
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
greenspe's review
5.0
Rereading after 12 years, upgrading this to a 5. I think I missed a lot when I was 22.
avitalgadcykman's review
5.0
Her First American (1985) was written by Lore Segal, an author who was born in Austria, escaped to England as a child during the Holocaust, and migrated to the USA after the Second World War. The story takes place in the fifties, in the USA, giving a perspective of the period as it is remembered years ahead by Ilka Wessnix, the main character. Ilka, a twenty-one-year-old Jewish refugee from Austria, who speaks English badly, does not belong anywhere. She is an “in-between”, as Stuart Hall calls it, in the sense that she has no longing for Austria and no sense of belonging in the USA. She arrives with an ambivalent state of spirit: combative while also vulnerable, having a profound necessity to belong. She is determined to find out how to adjust and “become American”. On her first trip in order to get to know the country she meets Carter, an African-American man in his fifties, an intellectual whose brilliant journalistic career and life in general are in decline due to alcoholism. Ilka is attracted to him and to everything he represents in her view: a proud part of a minority, who is a “real American”. He becomes her lover and her compass for the new land. During their romance, the two explore their histories, their lives as members of minorities, their demons, fears, hopes, pain, and trauma. Ilka’s mother, who joins her in the USA, still in shock from the event of her husband’s death in the Holocaust, represents an even more blatant version of a woman in trauma who struggles to survive.
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