Dickens in Brooklyn: Essays on Family, Writing & Madness

In this affecting and wide-ranging essay collection, novelist Neugeboren (Whatever Happened to Frankie King) reflects on his career and literary friendships, his time caring for his brother who had a mental illness, and his Jewish identity. The title essay draws parallels between Neugeboren’s youth in Brooklyn in the 1940s and ’50s and the work of Charles Dickens (his parents’ prized possession was a 20-volume set of the author’s complete works), noting his early life, like the lives of Dickens’s characters, was “determined by difficult economic circumstances, inhabited by eccentric larger-than-life characters, rooted in family feuds about inheritance and money, and steeped in scenes of intense, high drama.” In another piece, Neugeboren reflects on connecting with a distant cousin named Manya, whose stories of surviving Nazi concentration camps remind him “that a person who does not believe in miracles is not a realist.” Neugeboren’s personal struggles also get addressed, including the helplessness he felt trying to ease the suffering of his brother, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Elsewhere, he details his friendships with the late writers Martha Foley and Oliver Sacks, his efforts to balance a writing career with single fatherhood, and his political activism in the civil rights and anti-war movements. Neugeboren’s poignant and contemplative prose results in a rich portrait of a writer’s life. (Apr.)