I Love Gootie

 “Heartwarming is an overused adjective, but in the case of Apple’s new memoir, it is entirely appropriate. In Roommates (Warner, 1994), Apple wrote movingly about his grandfather Rocky, a Polish immigrant. Here, Apple remembers his grandmother Gootie, Rocky’s wife. Born in a Lithuanian shtetl, Gootie comes to the U.S. following World War I. There are some wonderful set pieces here: Gootie buying Max a bicycle; Gootie watching 'I Love Lucy'; Gootie’s comments after Max tells her about Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary (‘It's the same thing over and over. Don’t you have any books about women who aren’t whores?’); and Gootie’s comments the first time she sees an escalator (‘This kind of thing is no good for Jews.’). Although there is less of a narrative thread here than there was in Roommates, Gootie’s character carries the story along. Apple’s loving portrait of his grandmother gives us not only an example of a close relationship between a grandmother and a grandson but also a vision of small-town Jewish American life in the middle years of the century.”—Nancy Pearl, Booklist