Something Red is New in Paperback in the New York Times’s Paperback Row!

Gilmore’s second novel explores the lost ideals of a family once politically committed to making the world better. In Washington, D.C., in 1979, Dennis Goldstein toils in a government job he doesn’t believe in; his wife attends self-actualization seminars; and rebellion is left to their children, one of whom is off to college, where he starts delving into his grandfather’s Communist past. “ ‘Something Red’ is a delectable time capsule,” Susann Cokal wrote.

Jennifer Gilmore, author of the well- received “Golden Country,” explores this depressed emotional terrain in her sharp and contemplative second novel…“Something Red” is a delectable time capsule, with plenty of references to events and products, especially odoriferous ones, that plant us squarely in the moment. Love’s Baby Soft makes an appearance, as well as K-Tel records and Gunne Sax shirts…

What if they threw a revolution and nobody came? It’s worth bringing to the story of the Goldsteins’ lost ideals and lingering illusions our own layered memories and regrets. Amid the confusion of past experiences that create and sometimes paralyze the present, Gilmore has pulled off a remarkable feat: not of fusing the personal and the political but of showing why they’re so difficult to reconcile.–Susann Cokal, The New York Times Book Review

Jennifer Gilmore’s Something Red is ambitious and provocative, more Molotov cocktail than standard-issue domestic drama, raising profound questions about loyalty, independence, love of family and of country…Gilmore depicts the sometimes paranoid, sometimes exhilarating zeitgeist of the era in every evocative detail of food and music, but even more astonishing is the uncanny way she captures family, in all its messy complexity.
–Liza Nelson, Oprah Magazine

In Jennifer Gilmore’s rich and entertaining novel, Something Red, the personal is political for a Jewish American family in Carter-era Washington, D.C. Communism may be capitulating, the era of protest consigned to the history books, but the lure of radicalism-infidelity, cults, anorexia, espionage-still rocks the Goldstein’s domestic world.
–Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

In this wonderfully funny and compelling story of a splintering suburban family, Gilmore has written an intimate social history of three generations of American Jews.
–Susan Shreve, The Washington Post

The woes of her characters mirror those of the nation: gone is the heady optimism of the sixties, replaced by disillusionment and ennui…Gilmore can be hilariously eviscerating…

As the Cold War ends, the Goldsteins of Washington, D.C., have regrets…Their kids show a knack for protest, suggesting it’s a trait that skips a generation – an idea Gilmore bolsters with a well-orchestrated denouement that turns the Goldsteins’ world inside out.

–Sue Corbett, People Magazine

Gilmore, whose 2006 novel “Golden Country” was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, chronicles these tendencies with detail and generosity. Like Zoë Heller’s biting domestic saga “The Believers,” “Something Red” is a portrait of a secular Jewish family defined by its convictions even as it is undone by them…
Rendering the Goldsteins with appealing vividness, Gilmore seems mostly interested in their inner lives. She digs deep into their histories — both personal and familial — to get at the root of their beliefs and to hint at their spiraling disenchantment…these characters are crafted with care, conviction and a little self-consciousness — which seems just as it ought to be.–The Los Angeles Times

Delicious, complex and unexpected, Something Red (Scribner) is that impossible animal: a novel close to capable of being all things to everyone.
–Linda L. Richards, January Magazine

Politics makes strong promises. It vows to right wrongs, improve our fortunes, protect our freedoms. For many in Washington, politics offers a noble purpose, a cause worthy of shedding sweat and even blood. Just how well politics lives up to these promises in individual lives is at issue in Jennifer Gilmore’s second novel, Something Red…
–Drew Bratcher, Washingtonian Magazine

“…How we grow into who we are, how we reconcile past and present selves, how we are helped–or not–by political engagement or a Positive Mental Attitude or a return to the synagogue or sex and how much we really know about each other: these are the kinds of questions Gilmore examines with both humor and respect.”–Judith Viorst

(click here for the in-depth review)

…this sense of belatedness is the real theme of Something Red. Can Jews in the 1970s—and by implication, in our own time—really lay claim to the legacy of Jewish radicalism that dates back to the early 20th century?…As Gilmore shows, political passion comes and goes in historical cycles…
–Adam Kirsch, Tablet

Set during the Cold War of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, Jennifer Gilmore’s second novel is the mostly successful story of a Jewish family, the Goldsteins, affected and disaffected by the politics, fashion and trends of the times.
–Joseph Peschel

The way Gilmore interweaves history and family dynamics is likely to stimulate discussion for book groups. Something Red will be of particular interest to Red Diaper babies, but it will also appeal to readers who are interested in recent history and family dynamics. This multi-textured and emotionally wise book will reward readers…–David Cooper, The New York Journal of Books

Gilmore explores this ambivalence—how, even for the politically cognizant, personal concerns trump social ones almost all the time. Activist meaning seeps into every aspect of the Goldsteins’ lives, from the invite list at Beltway social gatherings to vegetarianism, sexual liberation, Olympic boycotts, Black Flag, Zionism, and the duty of dating couples to support each other’s rallies.

A nice profile in the 3/8 issue of Publishers Weekly.

The novel carefully plumbs all of their psychologies while interweaving them into the backdrop of history…History and the way it exerts an undeniable pressure on a family— shaping, imprisoning, and freeing its members—animates Gilmore’s imagination (Golden Country also follows 20th-century immigrants through generations).