His Little Women
Encyclopedia
His Little Women is a novel written by Judith Rossner
. Published in 1990, His Little Women was the first book that Rossner published after her critically acclaimed novel, August.
The book opens as fifteen-year-old Nell describes her life. Her parents have been divorced for nearly four years—Sam having left Violet and fathered two other daughters, Sonny and Liane, with his third wife, Lynn. Nell has not seen or spoken to Sam in all that time. Nell lives in Beverly Hills with her mother and stepfather, Tony, a native of Italy
. After initially ignoring Tony, Nell bonds with him, listening to opera
records with him.
When Tony dies unexpectedly, Sam re-enters Nell's life, even agreeing to escort Violet to the funeral
. At the funeral, Nell is approached by Louisa, her New York
-born half-sister, whom she has never met before. She agrees to take a ride with the twenty-something woman and the two sisters get acquainted. After the funeral, Nell moves in with her father.
Later, Louisa escorts Nell to the reading of Tony's will in which he deeds his record player and opera records to Nell. It is there that she meets Tony's daughters and their husbands for the first time.
Louisa, whom Sam can't stand, becomes a frequent visitor at his house. She spends most her time talking to Nell—the only person in the family that will tolerate her. After a particularly tense visit, Sam demands that Louisa leave the house.
Nell feels bad about what happened so she agrees to visit Louisa at her house. Louisa, who works for a soft-core porn
magazine that Sam owns, lives in the old magazine
headquarters. She suggests a visit to the I-Land, an island getaway modeled after the Playboy Mansion
. While Louisa is busy talking with the operator of the I-Land, Nell wanders around. While strolling around the pool, she sees a man who looks like Jack Campbell, her stepsister's husband. Although she isn't sure, she thinks that he is having sex with one of the many women who are partying at the mansion that night. She leaves hurriedly and mentions what she saw to Louisa.
Nell graduates from high school and goes to Barnard College
. She meets Saul Berman, a Columbia
student from Atlanta who is active in the SDS
. The two fall in love, attend law school together, and get married. The couple then moves to Atlanta to be closer to his family.
The marriage falls apart in a few years. Nell, who was never an observant Jew, has a difficult time fitting in with Saul's family, which is staunchly Orthodox. She is also unable to find work as a lawyer
and is not interested in having children. The couple divorces and Nell returns to New York
. Not too long after landing in New York, Nell learns that Louisa, who has abandoned a five-year-old son at the beginning of the novel, has had another baby, a girl she named Penelope.
She and Louisa renew their acquaintance and Nell, who had never had strong feelings about feminism
, agrees to do legal work for Louisa's feminist magazine. Nell also makes a visit to the West Coast where she is horrified by the condition her family has fallen into. Sam, who has had cosmetic surgery, is suffering from diabetes and is noticeably less than healthy. Lynn has had a nervous breakdown after the failure of a film she has produced and can barely function. Sonny and Liane—who are now in their teens—are both addicted to drugs
and are highly promiscuous. In fact, Sonny, who had always been difficult to manage, has also had a nervous breakdown.
Sometime later, Louisa is sued by Jack Campbell for libel; he feels that the plot in her new bestseller too closely paralleled events in his own life for it to have been a coincidence. With Nell's help, Louisa is able to defeat Jack Campbell in court.
At a party to celebrate the victory, Sam who has not been adequately managing his illness, collapses. He spends the last three months of his life slipping in and out of a coma
.
When he dies, Nell and Louisa's relationship becomes strained. Louisa is angry at what she feels is an inadequate inheritance
. Nell, who is beginning to realize how much she allowed her father to monopolize her life, begins a memoir
detailing her life with him. She contacts Shimmy, an old friend of her father's, for information about Sam's pre-Hollywood life.
Shimmy makes an unsuccessful attempt to seduce Nell. Nell, who is initially horrified, finds herself attracted despite their considerable age difference. After a disastrous fling with another lawyer, Nell decides to date Shimmy. She makes arrangements to come to California
to be closer to Shimmy.
In the final chapter of the book, Louisa and Nell have a final falling out over the apartment
that Sam bequeathed to her. Louisa wants Nell to sign it over to her as Nell is moving. Nell stands firm, telling Louisa that she plans to keep it no matter what. This angers Louisa; she writes another novel that casts Nell in a negative light. Nell completes her own book. At the end, Nell states that she has come to believe that "there is some complicity between reader and author in an account that makes no claim to the truth" and that "it goes without saying that I would like the reader to regard my own account as an exception to this truth."
Sam Pearlstein and his four daughters from three marriages."
Judith Rossner
Judith Perelman Rossner was an American novelist, best known for her 1975 novel Looking for Mr. Goodbar, which was inspired by the murder of Roseann Quinn and examined the underside of the seventies sexual liberation movement. Though Looking for Mr. Goodbar remained Rossner's best known and best...
. Published in 1990, His Little Women was the first book that Rossner published after her critically acclaimed novel, August.
Plot
The story is narrated by Nell Pearlstein Berman, daughter of the legendary movie producer, Sam Pearlstein. Nell is Sam's second daughter; Sam left his first wife and daughter, Louisa, to marry Violet, Nell's self-absorbed movie star mother.The book opens as fifteen-year-old Nell describes her life. Her parents have been divorced for nearly four years—Sam having left Violet and fathered two other daughters, Sonny and Liane, with his third wife, Lynn. Nell has not seen or spoken to Sam in all that time. Nell lives in Beverly Hills with her mother and stepfather, Tony, a native of Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. After initially ignoring Tony, Nell bonds with him, listening to opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
records with him.
When Tony dies unexpectedly, Sam re-enters Nell's life, even agreeing to escort Violet to the funeral
Funeral
A funeral is a ceremony for celebrating, sanctifying, or remembering the life of a person who has died. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from interment itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor...
. At the funeral, Nell is approached by Louisa, her New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
-born half-sister, whom she has never met before. She agrees to take a ride with the twenty-something woman and the two sisters get acquainted. After the funeral, Nell moves in with her father.
Later, Louisa escorts Nell to the reading of Tony's will in which he deeds his record player and opera records to Nell. It is there that she meets Tony's daughters and their husbands for the first time.
Louisa, whom Sam can't stand, becomes a frequent visitor at his house. She spends most her time talking to Nell—the only person in the family that will tolerate her. After a particularly tense visit, Sam demands that Louisa leave the house.
Nell feels bad about what happened so she agrees to visit Louisa at her house. Louisa, who works for a soft-core porn
PORN
Porn is a common short form for pornography. It may also refer to:* Progressive outer retinal necrosis, a disease of the retina* PORN, a French industrial rock band...
magazine that Sam owns, lives in the old magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
headquarters. She suggests a visit to the I-Land, an island getaway modeled after the Playboy Mansion
Playboy Mansion
The Playboy Mansion is the home of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner. Located in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles, California, the mansion became famous during the 1970s through media reports of Hefner's lavish parties.-History:The house is described as being in the "Gothic-Tudor" style...
. While Louisa is busy talking with the operator of the I-Land, Nell wanders around. While strolling around the pool, she sees a man who looks like Jack Campbell, her stepsister's husband. Although she isn't sure, she thinks that he is having sex with one of the many women who are partying at the mansion that night. She leaves hurriedly and mentions what she saw to Louisa.
Nell graduates from high school and goes to Barnard College
Barnard College
Barnard College is a private women's liberal arts college and a member of the Seven Sisters. Founded in 1889, Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1900. The campus stretches along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough...
. She meets Saul Berman, a Columbia
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
student from Atlanta who is active in the SDS
SDS
-Science:* Safety data sheet or material safety data sheet, a form with data regarding the properties of a particular substance* Satellite Data System, a system of United States military communications satellites....
. The two fall in love, attend law school together, and get married. The couple then moves to Atlanta to be closer to his family.
The marriage falls apart in a few years. Nell, who was never an observant Jew, has a difficult time fitting in with Saul's family, which is staunchly Orthodox. She is also unable to find work as a lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
and is not interested in having children. The couple divorces and Nell returns to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. Not too long after landing in New York, Nell learns that Louisa, who has abandoned a five-year-old son at the beginning of the novel, has had another baby, a girl she named Penelope.
She and Louisa renew their acquaintance and Nell, who had never had strong feelings about feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, agrees to do legal work for Louisa's feminist magazine. Nell also makes a visit to the West Coast where she is horrified by the condition her family has fallen into. Sam, who has had cosmetic surgery, is suffering from diabetes and is noticeably less than healthy. Lynn has had a nervous breakdown after the failure of a film she has produced and can barely function. Sonny and Liane—who are now in their teens—are both addicted to drugs
DRUGS
Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows are an American post-hardcore band formed in 2010. They released their debut self-titled album on February 22, 2011.- Formation :...
and are highly promiscuous. In fact, Sonny, who had always been difficult to manage, has also had a nervous breakdown.
Sometime later, Louisa is sued by Jack Campbell for libel; he feels that the plot in her new bestseller too closely paralleled events in his own life for it to have been a coincidence. With Nell's help, Louisa is able to defeat Jack Campbell in court.
At a party to celebrate the victory, Sam who has not been adequately managing his illness, collapses. He spends the last three months of his life slipping in and out of a coma
Coma
In medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as...
.
When he dies, Nell and Louisa's relationship becomes strained. Louisa is angry at what she feels is an inadequate inheritance
Inheritance
Inheritance is the practice of passing on property, titles, debts, rights and obligations upon the death of an individual. It has long played an important role in human societies...
. Nell, who is beginning to realize how much she allowed her father to monopolize her life, begins a memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
detailing her life with him. She contacts Shimmy, an old friend of her father's, for information about Sam's pre-Hollywood life.
Shimmy makes an unsuccessful attempt to seduce Nell. Nell, who is initially horrified, finds herself attracted despite their considerable age difference. After a disastrous fling with another lawyer, Nell decides to date Shimmy. She makes arrangements to come to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
to be closer to Shimmy.
In the final chapter of the book, Louisa and Nell have a final falling out over the apartment
Apartment
An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...
that Sam bequeathed to her. Louisa wants Nell to sign it over to her as Nell is moving. Nell stands firm, telling Louisa that she plans to keep it no matter what. This angers Louisa; she writes another novel that casts Nell in a negative light. Nell completes her own book. At the end, Nell states that she has come to believe that "there is some complicity between reader and author in an account that makes no claim to the truth" and that "it goes without saying that I would like the reader to regard my own account as an exception to this truth."
Critical reception
His Little Women did poorly with the critics, garnering particularly harsh reviews. Gene Lyons of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "Laboriously contrived, rambling and lacking momentum, Rossner's new novel is an unsuccessful amalgam of Hollywood inside story and attempts at 'meaningful' statements about the tensions between a fiction writer's creative use of real-life situations and her responsibility to avoid libelous characterizations...After a promising beginning that establishes expectations of a scandal...Rossner segues into a trite description of teenaged Nell's seduction by a repulsive studio lackey. The novel becomes crowded with caricatures of unlovely Hollywood types, all as flimsy as a strip of celluloid." The Library Journal echoed Lyon's sentiment stating, "Too many story lines drain dramatic tension in this sprawling novel about movie mogulBusiness magnate
A business magnate, sometimes referred to as a capitalist, czar, mogul, tycoon, baron, oligarch, or industrialist, is an informal term used to refer to an entrepreneur who has reached prominence and derived a notable amount of wealth from a particular industry .-Etymology:The word magnate itself...
Sam Pearlstein and his four daughters from three marriages."