Breakfast with the Ones You Love

by Eliot Fintushel

Meet Lea Tillim, aka Cadaver Dimples, Star of Morgues and Emergency Rooms. Scarecrow thin, with a sharp crew cut and a dead face, Lea's a girl with a talent. She can think you into a heart attack if... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553384058
• ISBN13: 9780553384055
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Spectra Books
• Length: 275 Pages
• Weight: 0.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Wild and Innovative, Rollicking and Real

This book has the breakneck pace of a Lee Child novel minus the predictability, with ecstatic prose and outré plot twists and turns that take you to the dark and funny edges of the everyday world. "Breakfast With the Ones You Love" is smart and real and filled with Fintushel's unique response to life, love, mysticism, the humor and pathos of the unknowable. It's one of my chosen of the chosen of the chosen books for 2007.

Pancakes and Death Rays

Disclaimer: the author used to be married to my sister. He happens to be a wonderful human being, a talented actor, master of the theremin, teaches drama to incarcerated youth, and an all-round mensch, besides being the author of this dazzling, touching and hysterically funny novel Breakfast With the Ones You Love. I brought "Breakfast" on my summer vacation in Arkansas, and I just devoured it. It puts me in mind of Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein and John Kennedy Toole. The main character, Lea Tillim, is so compelling with her tough guy exterior, throwaway sexuality and her metamorphosis as the story unwinds. The story just gets more and more complex with an ever more bizarre cast of characters -- a drug dealing messiah, the unlikely gang of yarmulke wearing disciples, gangsters, a satan-worshipping knitting circle and more. The plot is woven quite deftly into a climax I found hilarious and emotionally satisfying. Kind of like... kind of like... well, you'll just have to read it for yourself.

An outstanding first novel

I picked this up at the library on a whim, and read it cover-to-cover in one afternoon, stopping only to go get kleenex. There are surprises in every chapter, and the main character, Lea, grows more human on every page. She is so easy to identify with, as she develops the kind of all-encompassing teenage love most of us have felt...but not necessarily for the man who will bring the Messiah! You wonder at first if Jack, the Yid, is schizophrenic; it would be an easy road for the plot to take. Much harder is the idea that he is sane. His relationship with Lea makes them both blossom, and in the end it is Lea whose flash of insight gives Jack the chance to bring his plans to fruition. You can't forget the other characters either, all strongly if briefly drawn (this is a shortish novel, after all): Belle shatters all assumptions about old ladies, and James manages to be both himself and a heroic, protective big brother (and sometimes a vessel of the Devil, but that's giving too much away...). The minyan deserves a novel of their own. Tule, the cat, was the only disappointment; she plays such a large role in the early parts of the novel, that I was disappointed to see her fade out over time and become merely a cat. But that's the kind of realism that Fintushel seems to insist upon in this book. His novel may have a room that becomes a metaphysical spaceship, a girl who kills with her mind, and a young man who brings the Messiah, but by G-d, a teenage girl has to be believable as a teenage girl, and a cat, in the end, is just a cat. There is a lot of Jewish/Yiddish/kabbalah vocabulary in this book, but it shouldn't be tough for someone with no background in Judaism--words are mostly defined in context, if not immediately, then later in the chapter. If you like reading novels with Jewish themes and settings, you'll find this book right up your alley.

My first encounter with Science Fiction..and I loved it

I am not a science fiction reader AT ALL but I picked up BREAKFAST and couldn't put it down. The characters are addictive and the imagery is amazing. I loved the ideas, the stories and side plots and mostly Lea and her world. I was so impressed with the clever writing that never condescended and never distracted. This is a talented author full of light and endless ideas. I laughed out loud and I also cried a bit. It held me from the start. READ THIS BOOK ..you'll be surprised and engaged.

Chock full of delightful surprises.

This is an amazing book, and I don't even like science fiction! I was hooked from the first paragraph, and by the time I was half way through, I realized it wasn't just the crazy but very seductive plot; it was Lea, who was slowly transforming from someone dangerously bazarre into a complex and very sympathetic human being. And by the end it was apparent that this book, along with being really fun to read, is also a sensitive and touching portrayal of the human caapcity to emerge from a life-deadening fear into a yes-saying affirmation of lfe, like how we feel when we have breakfast with the ones we love. One other comment: I think Eliot Funtushel's perceptive psychological insights, together with his wild imagination and very talented gift with words and language, make for a read chocked full of delightful surprises.