This book explores the entanglement of three Jewish families in 1950's America. Seymour is a salesman who finds he can make enough money working for a gangster called the Terrier that he can finance the Broadway show he's always dreamed of. Joseph is the inventor of a new kind of household cleaner called Essoil, which he named after his wife, Esther. Frances, whose sister is married to the Terrier, becomes the tv spokeswoman for Essoil.
The novel alternates between the stories of how Seymour and Joseph made their fortunes and the upcoming wedding of their offspring, David and Miriam.
I really liked Joseph's storyline more than the others. He was a gentle man who always tried to please his horrible overbearing wife and be a good father to Miriam. Neither of them really appreciated his work (which made their lives possible) and didn't know what they had in him, until it was too late.
Even though I enjoyed the book, I wish Gilmore had spent more time making each of the characters more distinctive, as I got confused about who was who on more than one occasion. It's exactly like Amy said in her review, you just can't keep the characters straight in your mind because they are all kind of similar and the perspective of the story changes often.
Anyway, I doubt this book will go down in history as anyone's all-time favorite book, but it was okay.
