Holidays come and go. Nothing, it would seem to write home about. Yet the characters confront individual crises that have the ability to crush and destroy a spirit, a marriage, a family, a place in the community. Remarkably, Goodman portrays her characters as possessors of souls rather than issues, as people who struggle with moral dilemmas without whining, who face life in all its complexity and confusion without opting out or blaming their mothers, and, above all, who are unique and multifaceted. The Kirshners are tightly knit and tightly circumscribed.
Religion is paramount.
As followers of Rav Elijah Kirshner, the group left Frankfurt in the 1930s and resettled in Washington Heights. The Kirshners there had lived rich, complicated lives . . . . He has built a community of vigilance, a careful, cautious, American generation. . . . He cannot believe in the world anymore. There's Nina, who is insecure of her status in the community and therefore anxious and vigilant, and her husband, Andras, who is not a believer and is alienated not only from the Kirshners, but also from his own family.