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.