This textured and heart-rending novel explores the dynamic of a Midwestern Jewish family in the booming post-war 1950's. Twins and their older brother endure covert abuse and neglect from parents who are pillars of a small suburb. The story is told unflinchingly in the first person by one of the twins, in a narrative which is by turns, poetic, fierce, funny, sad, and joyous. The book assembles itself into crystalline vignettes which particularize and celebrate life, landscape, and characters. The darker tale, that of the sins of fathers and mothers being visited upon sons, is told without...