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Book Review  by Ida Nasatir

Go Fight City Hall by Ethel Rosenberg
November 14, 1949—Ida Nasatir book review —Go Fight City Hall by Ethel Rosenberg—Southwestern Jewish Press, page 3 : Ethel Rosenberg has written a warm and humorous novel. Go Fight City Hall is really a series of related stories and incidents about a group of Jewish families living in Brooklyn. It is a funny, true and extremely readable book. The author has a wonderful ear for the dialogue of her people. She does not use dialect, but translates Yiddishisms delightfully and utilizes the Yiddish rhythm and phrasing. The result is one of the warmest works in recent fiction. The major plot revolves around the determined Mrs. Rivkin's activities to arrange the marriage of her daughter Hannah to Howie Weissman, a nice boy, but reluctant to take upon himself the responsibilities of a family. The gentle nagging of Hannah's mother is humorous, but not bitter. The attempts of Hannah's Tante Esther to bring a shadcn into the picture is frowned upon by key persons in the book as well as by most readers. Nevertheless Tante Esther has a point, "What's so terrible?" she asks of no one in particular. "I didn't get married through a shadcn?" And she adds, "I didn't live forty years with my husband, may he rest in peace? A good husband, a good provider, a good father?" And then she reminds her listeners that a girl she knows went to a shadcn, married and, although it cost to hundred dollars, "they live like two little pigeons."  The romance ends happily.  Howie and Hannah marry, or at least he proposes to her on the last page of the book. And it is a good ending. There are other gentle tales in this book. How Tante Esther goes through the difficult taks of taking off her galoshes (first she has to take off her two corsets ('The big one is for me. The little one is for my stomach"); how Howie and Hannah meet on the BMT, under hilarious circumstances—all make memorable stories.  The villain of the book, if such a book really possesses a "bad man," is Mr. Kugel, the landlord.  He is a very pleasant villain, indeed. And pleasant, too is Go Fight City Hall. Long after you have read and put it aside, you will recall its contents and chuckle.