About the Book

The first section of REFLECTIONS, Relatives, was written in 1978 when Ms Rosenblum was in her early fifties, and she has continued to chronicle her life ever since. (RELATIVES* was originally published as a family memoir by The Dial Press in 1979 and adapted for this book)*. It encompasses not only stories about her maternal and paternal relatives, many riotously Hungarian, but also her husband, her children and her brother, who became schizophrenic in his late teens. In exploring their lives and her connections to them, her own emotional life is revealed.

Her richly textured marriage to Ralph and her charmed relationship with Joe, her first lover, both before and after her marriage, makes up the second part of the book, The Mourning After. It covers the last years of her husband’s life and the six years of her subsequent relationship with Joe.

In 2005 at the age of seventy-eight, she left New York City, where she had spent most of her life, and bought a dilapidated 1928 Arts and Crafts ‘Bungalow’ in Beverly, Massachusetts. The last section, titled Observations From Over the Hill, deals with this major transition and consists of the story of her relationship with her house, interwoven with past and present incidents in her life that are evoked by it. She presently dwells in solitary bliss in Beverly.

* Praise for RELATIVES (1979) includes the following: Marshall Brickman, writer, film director and co-screenwriter of “Annie Hall” had this to say about the original publication of RELATIVES, “….Funny, touching, chilling, beautifully and honestly written; and with enough characters, situations and anecdotes to populate three novels or eight long-running musicals…Fine, compassionate book”. Stuart Hample, playwright and illustrator, wrote of RELATIVES in 1979, “….I admire most Davida Rosenblum’s bravery in taking a journey into her memory, where she sees everyone, including herself, naked under the harsh light of truth”.