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December 31, 2004/Tevet 19 5765, Vol. 57, No. 18
Long, long-ago longings
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat: Daniela Kuper's words skitter off the page like so many marble shooters. The precision of her language and the density of her descriptions conjure a kaleidoscope of images - and emotions - as roiling as the lives of her characters. They bombard the reader, especially in the opening pages of Kuper's novel, "Hunger and Thirst" (St. Martin's Press, $23.95 hardcover), almost threatening to overwhelm. But as the story line emerges and Kuper's characters take form, the excess provides rich context for the book's dramatic arc.
The story is set in Chicago, circa 1950. Kuper captures the flavor of the neighborhood, a veritable ethnic melting pot, with her vivid depictions of its sights, smells and sounds.
There's the Ashkenazim, the local deli; the Greek's, the corner grocer; and Caswells', the candy store where children hover hungrily over a dizzying assortment of Ju Jus, Raisinets, Red Hots, Grape Fizzies and more.
There's the ladies' Friday night kalooki games; the neighbors upstairs and down; Fran, who's waiting on Married Johnny and Mrs. Dubrow who is waiting for her husband Jim to hold a steady job. There's the White Sox on the radio and Dick Clark on the TV, mothers in the kitchens and fathers at backbreaking jobs so just maybe their kids can get ahead.
And then there's the Trout family: Irwina, Buddy and daughter, Joan. It's Irwina, who grows up as one of three sisters living with their widowed mother Belle; Irwina, who helps cook and clean for boarders whose rent helps make ends meet. It's Irwina, who covets beautiful things and longs for a life of high fashion and style; Irwina, who marries Buddy because she thinks he can make it happen.
They meet at the Aragon ballroom, romance flares with a shared dream mapped out on a cocktail napkin. Buddy's Frock Shop, just down the street from Bernice's Beauty Heaven.
"Dresses. Shoes. Feathers in hats. Pearls on necks. Silk stockings. Real perfume, not the toilet stuff," that's what Irwina craves.
And Buddy knows. "He was using her words. Chanel. Patou. Schiaparelli. Vionnet. Sex on her tongue. She had been studying the fashion pages since she was 14, but out loud. ... Names you say like you been looking at my dream," says Irwina.
But then it all begins to unravel like threads from one of her designer's hand-rolled seams. Irwina's beloved brother-in-law, Joe, dies suddenly, sister Rose starts working at the store, Buddy starts carrying cheaper goods and drinking more as Irwina grows more distant. Joan, just edging into puberty, gets caught in the maelstrom, her parents looking to her for the emotional needs they can't fulfill. The situation finally snaps apart like a strand of frock shop Poppit beads.
Kuper, in the Valley recently for a reading at Tempe's Changing Hands Bookstore, says she grew up in a Jewish neighborhood not unlike the one she has so carefully drawn. "The wrong side of the tracks," she says wryly, "with lots of bedroom lights on at night and kids studying to get ahead."
It was an era when "there was a fierce determination to have the good life," she recalls. Kuper left the old neighborhood for college at Southern Illinois University, married, then followed a husband to Boulder, Colo., where she raised two children and started an advertising agency.
She sold out her interest to her partner 15 years ago to pursue writing.
"We all have books in us," she says. "But very few of us will walk away from a steady income to fill a notebook with junk."
That "junk" resulted in five literary scholarships, several published short stories, a nomination for a Pushcart
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