Some passages ring out as rhythmic, wry, intense as haggadot. Ruth Puttermesser, when we first meet her, is a thirtysomething lawyer with a thankless job in New York's Municipal Building.
Readers are eager to embrace a character who, like themselves, loves to read.
Yet Puttermesser faintly repels. She studies the intricacies of Hebrew grammar in bed at night. She fantasizes Hebrew lessons with her dead great-uncle Zindel, a synagogue shammes whom she never met. She unwittingly drives her lover away by reading Plato aloud. Such ventures are potentially endearing, even tender.