Leela Corman

Growing up on the teeming streets of New York's Lower East Side in the early 20th century, Jewish immigrant twins Esther and Fanya experience radically different lives as a burlesque dancer in a brothel and a nurse for an obstetrician who performs illegal abortions. 25,000 first printing.

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Dennis Jacob Rosenfeld

I'm quite torn with this one. I like the story, even though it's not a very original one, but I have large difficulties with Corman's style. There 's almost no difference between the faces of the different characters and oftentimes I had to struggle to figure out who I was looking at. I would have loved for someone else to have been the artist on this and then Corman could have stuck to the writing.

Gavin

Bursting with energy, Yiddish and Bronx and Corman. The voices are so fun to hear in your head that it flies by. Makes other written dialogue seem like the papery nonsense it is.

Doesn’t shy away from the brutality of the very recent past. The principled midwife is a eugenicist. Fanya is violently proud. Esther is dead inside. The casual pogroms of the old world.

Everyone is grotesque but their faces morph between so many different grotesque expressions you don’t mind.

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