The main character, Renee Richter, is a compulsive gambler; Ariel Zauberman has succeeded in business through somewhat nefarious dealings. Together with a cast of Miami (read, Jewish) condo-dwellers, they people a novel that is at once comic and cosmic.
The comfortable Trianon Condominiums of Miami Beach are home to a basically homogeneous group of elderly and ailing Jewish residents, and, as this feverish and sometimes hallucinatory first novel graphically makes clear, they must all confront their own demons. Between the Jewish High Holy days of Rosh Hashanah (the New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), a time traditionally spent in repentance, prayer and charity, Reenie Richter, daughter of Trianon resident Selma Richter, fradulently obtains the $97,000 savings account of another resident and gambles it away during a nightmarish cruise. For this there's the devil to pay when corrupt voluptuary Ariel Zauberman extracts a heavy price for granting her more cash. Reenie's downward spiral as a compulsive gambler (she has already squandered her family's fortune) is a taut story line on which the author hangs any number of memorable characters who, during this significant 10-day span, query who shall live and who shall die, who shall wax rich and who shall remain poor. A cheerfully ominous group of Haitians and Cubans add their own particular observances. Lurid and explicit, this harrowing tale, told somewhat unevenly, but to good effect. (June)
The wages of mammon reign in this outrageous first novel of excesses that leave the sins of the ancient Romans far behind. This is a study of Jewish people in Miami and those who care for them, prey on them, and murder them. Reenie Richter, a compulsive gambler, steals from a group of elderly condo dwellers-including her stroke-impaired mother; her mother's housekeeper, Leona; and Frummi Geller, a blind woman-with the intent of winning a million dollars and paying back all her benefactors. She heists a bank book that she finds in a phone booth, reasoning that she is ``merely making an unauthorized loan from a Mrs. Trudy Schwartz,'' which she plans to pay back with ``more interest than she would be able to get in a bank.'' On a cruise where Reenie gambles ceaselessly, she meets her match in Ariel Zauberman, who is immensely rich, corpulent, and corrupt. He has murdered for money and violated the grave of a childhood friend (Reenie's father) to recover a platinum watch. A brilliant, irreverent, and almost mythical treatment of the American dream of a better tomorrow at the expense of today. Recommended for all libraries.-Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md.
