I requested Lynda Cohen Loigman’s The Two-Family House after reading The Wartime Sisters. This is another book about complex family dynamics, where flawed characters really do mean well, but there’s no super-happy magical moment where it all works out great, fade to credits.

Two brothers, Abe and Mort, and their two wives and two families share a two-family house. The brothers work together in the company their father started. For Abe, work is just what you do to support your real life, with family, while Mort had to drop out of school, losing his chance to study higher math, when their father died.   Upstairs, Abe and Helen have rowdy boys, and downstairs, Mort is disappointed that he and his wife Rose only have daughters. The household is bustling, with constant visits up and down, as well as visits with the extended family and machatunim, but Mort’s disappointment over his lot in life is a constant sour note.

The plot hinges on something so wildly unrealistic and contrived, it’s almost like magical realism — as you read, you just need to accept this completely crazy thing happened, and go on with the developed characters.  For a little while, I couldn’t accept the main event as realistic or reasonable, and then, like any shocking family secret, it just seemed to be part of the family story.

By the end, though, I felt like I knew this family, like I’d grown up down the street, and had seen the kids mature and the family relationships change. Even though there are a lot of cousins in this book, I rarely had to think about who was who, because their personalities are so developed and consistent (including one daughter whose personality is basically being a follower of stronger personalities around her). This is an engaging family drama about the connections of blood, proximity, and choice.