Jewish Journal - Dade County A Mouthful of Air by Amy Koppelman (MacAdam/Cage, 212 pages, $23) this first novel is a devastating depiction of contemporary Jewish life in one family on the upper West Side of Manhattan, an area frequently regarded as being  primarily the home of Zabar's and trendy synagogues.  Those features do indeed define the neighborhood but it also contains human beings. whose lives reflect the stress and strains of living in the twentieth century.  The events recounted take place in 1997.

Julie Davie is the mother of one-year old Teddy and the wife of Ethan who is a successful lawyer.  She has tenuous and complicated relations with both, worry about what will happen  when she grows older.  Product of a broken marriage, she suffers fro the numerous anxieties that eventually lead her to attempt suicide.  never spelling out explicitly, this event is referred to by Julie's family and friends as a "accident"

Much of the brook contains her ruminations about what occurred, her subsequent hospitalization, and her determined endeavors to move beyond the compulsions that dominate her existence.  These efforts include moving the Long Island suburbs where Julie struggles to escape from her obsessive recollections of her father's abandonment of her mother.  her bitter memories  about him complicate her life as does her dissatisfaction with her new neighbors and her concerns about her mother who struggles to establish  a new life for herself.  Julie strives valiantly to put behind her attempt to kill herself. 

Confusion and despair complicate Julie's slow recovery when she learns that she again is pregnant.  Adding to her responses is her apprehension about how her husband will feel on hearing this information.  A further complication is her psychiatrist's insistence that she resume taking  anti-depressant pills.  since she cannot do so  while nursing the new baby, which she is determined to do, she finds herself confronted by a powerful dilemma.  how she resolves it cannot be revealed here without ruining the readers appreciation of this book. 

Dr. Morton I Teicher is the Founding Dean of the Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University and Dean Emeritus, School of Social work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

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©2005 Amy Koppelman. All rights reserved.  A Mouthful of Air by Amy Koppelman.

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