Allegra Maud Goldman
by Edith Konecky
This bookgroup selection was a wonderfully fast read. It's a coming-of-age story about a young Jewish girl in Depression-era Brooklyn. While I thoroughly enjoyed it, I�m curious to find out what Stepan thinks of it � it is very much a young feminist book and one I would have available for any young girl to read.
Allegra Maud Goldman's father is self-made dress manufacturer and her mother is a society woman whose life is full of gaming (cards and mah-jongg) and socializing. Neither parent seems terribly interested in the development of their precocious daughter, convinced as they are that she�ll marry and have children someday.
It was fascinating to see how this practical young girl made sense of the world around her. She faces the prejudices of being female in pre-WWII America, comes to terms with the inevitability of death, ponders the various meanings of love, and attempts to reconcile her view of what she wants her world to be within the narrow confines placed on her by her family. It�s a book of philosophical conflict between Allegra and the world she was born into, yet she comes to accept the limitations of her world and the struggles she will have to endure to make her world one she can live within.