A Middlemarch for Middle America

The Middlesteins: The name of the family at the heart of Jami Attenberg’s new novel makes an audacious quasi-sociological claim. Here, it promises, we will see the representative American Jewish clan, just as in Middlemarch George Eliot set out to show us a representative English town. And the strength of Attenberg’s modest but effective novel is that she convinces us, sometimes to our own chagrin, that the way the Middlesteins live is, indeed, the way we live now. Here is a b’nei mitzvah featuring twins performing a choreographed hip-hop performance, a shul populated by families who are good-but-not-great friends, and a suburban landscape dominated by strip malls—in this case, it’s Chicagoland, but it could just as well be New Jersey or L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. There are no rebels, freaks, activists, or artists to be found in this novel, just ordinary people doing their best to lead happy lives and mostly failing.