Roommates: My Grandfather's Story

by Max Apple

Book Overview

Max Apple was lucky enought to share 40 years of his life with his grandfather. This is Apple's poignant yet funny testament to the man who influenced and shaped his entire life--and helped to hold his family together. "A tender, tough and totally compelling account".--USA Today.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446518263
• ISBN13: 9780446518260
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Warner Books (NY)
• Length: 211 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A TOUCHING TRIBUTE AND A SPLENDID STORY

Here's a true story that'll make you laugh, cry, and rejoice that you're alive. Today, when dysfunctional families threaten to be the norm, this family functions solidly together despite disagreements and recriminations. Love doesn't conquer all, but it's the glue that holds life together just when it's falling apart. Herman (Rocky) Goldstein is an aged Jewish baker, a tough, scrappy, comic curmudgeon who shares a garage apartment with his grandson, Max. After the death of Max's father, Max takes the 93-year-old grandfather to graduate school with him. When Max meets Debby, an attractive 60s radical, Rocky does everything to break up the romance. After meeting Rocky in the off-campus apartment the two men share, Debby remarks, "Even if he's paying half the rent, you're getting a bad deal." Max and Debby do marry (a ceremony that Rocky refuses to attend). They have two children and Debby contracts a fatal disease. Just as Max begins to crumble, his grandfather, now 103 years of age, arrives to love the family and show them how to survive. Seldom has a more touching tribute been written. "Roommates" is an absolutely splendid story.

Fantastic and emotional!

I could not put in down, it held my attention. One of the best books I have ever read! It would have wonderful to have a relationship with my Grandfather like that. The Great-Grand Children will never forget him.

Roommates & Gootie took me back to my childhood.

Reading Roommates;My Grandfather's Story & Gootie; My Grandmothers Story, took me back home to the same neighborhood and time frame. Max Apple & his sisters and I & my sisters, lived about 6 doors from each other and played toghther from time to time. I remember his sisters twin beds and wished they were mine. One of those men walking to and from American Seating was my father.I remember "two bit Sophie".What a hoot!Later my sister Betty would be Dr. Farber's office nurse for many years.As a nurse I also took care of Debby and on another occasion, her mother, at St. Mary's Hospital. American Bakery, Jack Remes, Steketee's,the grocery store around the corner etc all brought my early childhood back vividly . I also remember the faces of Gootie & Rocky. The picture of Gootie looks exactly like my "Busha".Anyone growing up in that neighborhood in Grand Rapids, MI the late 40's and 50's can go home again.

A moving story about a boy, his grandad, & their differences

I first encountered this book in shortened, abriged form, within an old Reader's Digest. I bought the book and found it a moving, touching, stirring, amusing, funny, and close-to-home tale. I used a cutting of it's story in prose interp competitions. Because of Max Appple's genius, needless to say, I won many awards.