His Little Women

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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.

[edit] Plot

The story, which is told primarily in flashback, 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, Esther, 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 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 who caters to Violet's every whim. 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. Nell is somewhat put of by Louisa's brashness but stays in the car with her anyway. After the funeral, Nell moves in with her father after he arranges to have a housekeeper look after Violet who is "languid to the point of inertia."

Louisa escorts Nell to the reading of Tony's will in which he deeds his record player and opera records to her. 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. (Louisa and Sam's younger daughters--Sonny and Liane--share a mutual contempt.) 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 Honey, 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 owned and operated by Teddy Marx, a former friend of Sam's. While Louisa is busy talking with Marx, Nell wanders around the mansion. 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. This conversation would prove to be very significant later.

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 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. Sam offers up one of his unused apartments for her to use and Nell lands a job at a law firm. 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 magazine FRemale. 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. His wife, 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. (Estella, their Mexican-born maid, had quit after becoming convinced that Louisa defamed her in a pornographic novel that she'd published under a pseudonym. Estella returned to Mexico and refused to speak to or see anyone in the Pearlstein family. Sonny, who had always been strongly attached to Estella, made numerous unsuccessful attempts to see her. Sonny eventually commits suicide after another failed attempt at reconciliation.)

Sometime later, Louisa is sued by Jack Campbell for libel; he feels that the plot in her bestseller, Joe Stalbin's Daughters, 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, who had been dropping hints to her feelings of resentment toward Nell during the libel suit, 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.

After an enjoyable dinner with Shimmy, he 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 at her old firm, Nell decides to date Shimmy. She makes arrangements to finish work on another libel case in New York and then come to California to live with 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 making arrangements to live in California and won't be needing it. Nell stands firm, telling Louisa that she plans to keep it no matter what. This angers Louisa who 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."

[edit] 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."^[1] The Library Journal echoed Lyon's sentiment stating, "Too many story lines drain dramatic tension in this sprawling novel about movie mogul Sam Pearlstein and his four daughters from three marriages."^[2]