Fall and fall of a Jewish shopkeeper in New York City. No, it's not a typo. There is no top-bottom syndrome here. No heydays to be remembered and missed.For at the beginning of this novel poor Morris Bober was already on the streets. Metaphorically and literally. And page after page his local business comes more and more a cropper.
He doesn't care that much. He gets by. He complains but not too much. After all, Morris is a conservative fellow who has already made a mistake deciding to get a deli counter. And now he's just waiting for being thrown off from the shopkeeping business by his younger competitors.
This novel is about Morris and his family. It's a book about dignity and fairness, both qualities that unfortunately don't really help in selling goods.
I liked what Malamud wrote and found it still up-to-date with the ongoing disappearance of local shops, eaten up by outlets and shopping malls. This is a good book to be kept and read beyond a counter, I think.
