Unclish, the Seltzers’ uncle, drilled the rules into them when they were kids through rhymes like “A bite and half / and you won’t need another, / whether it’s your father, your sister, / or even your mother.

Författaren själv växte upp i Monsey, New York, där många ortodoxa judar bor, och det märks att hans bakgrund varit viktig för berättelsen. The message, that identity is important but becomes damaging if it is insular and wholly inward- and backward-looking, is very important and he can be very, very funny about it.The scene where Mudd bequeaths her body parts for digestion is bad enough, although it does fit into a literary tradition that include’s Villon’s Testament, Lindsay’s Papyngo and Donne’s The Will. Ultimately, should people continually refer to their historical ethnicity regardless of how long they, and their ancestors, have been living in a different country? Of practical concern, his dead mother is six-foot-two and weighs about four hundred and fifty pounds. In this book, he pursues another version of the same theme: the intolerable weight of history, of its deadening solemnity, and the individual’s rage to throw it off.

His mother's last wish is for her children to Consume her, and Seventh was torn between fulfilling his obligation to his people and finally break free from the tradition and identity that he had never wanted. I loved the first third of the book, stuck with the middle part to see what would happen and got bored with the final third. Graphic situations abound; even the characters are revolted, while, through their often ludicrous stories, Auslander explores the sense of otherness and the value of diversity.But you’re not reading As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, but Mother For Dinner, the new work by the dizzyingly acerbic Shalom Auslander. Irreverent and written with Auslander’s incomparable humor, Mother for Dinner is an exploration of legacy, assimilation, the things we owe our families, and the things we owe ourselves.