The overall content of the book was fascinating and well-written. The copy I received, though, had formatting issues which distracted from the reading experience.

This one is a tough review for me to make. While I enjoyed reading Carr’s overall recollections of his mother and her family through his childhood and teenage hood, I have to agree with some other reviews I’ve seen out there and be clear that this is really Carr’s memoir and not a biography of his mother at all. As his mother, she absolutely figures a lot in his story, far more than his father who is really more like a passing ship. The reader definitely learns her character pretty well but at the end of the day, she is just another character in Carr’s life story. It was fascinating to learn about his youth, impressions of his uncles, and growing up Jewish in the 1920 London, while living hand to mouth in a regular basis. He sure comes from a very peculiar and rather dysfunctional family.

I went into this knowing very little about the book, and it took me awhile to get my bearings and enjoy the book for what it was. Although the title implies the book is about Esther Kreitman, Yiddish writer and sister of I.J. and Isaac Bashevis Singer, it's really a memoir of Maurice Carr, Esther's son. Once I understood what I was reading, I appreciated the memoir as a literary depiction of Jewish life in London between the wars (and a bit into World War II). (Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.)

Thank you, NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. This book was not what I expected! The story is supposed to be a memoir about Esther Singer Kreitman and her two brothers, Isaac Bashevis Singer and I.J. singer. The story is told by Esther’s son and it’s mainly about him. It is hard to follow the writing and the ideas are fragmented and irrelevant. Esther was born to a mother who only wanted sons . Her life was not a happy one and she had a loveless marriage, too. Epilepsy caused Esther more heartbreak until she was officially diagnosed with the disease.. I wanted to learn a lot more about Esther , but, this book didn’t do it. I really wanted to like this book.

Esther Kreitman is indeed the forgotten sister of I J and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Few have heard of her although the recent reissue of her novels might remedy this. I hope so. I’ve just read her novel Diamonds and although I can’t pretend it is of great literary merit, especially compared to the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer, I found it enormously enjoyable. Esther was in fact the first of the siblings to write – yet was persuaded to throw her early writings away when leaving Poland, in case they were found and considered seditious. This book by her son Maurice Carr is not a traditional cradle to grave biography (although she surely deserves one) but a personal memoir told largely through a series of vignettes chronicling Esther’s troubled relationship with her family, her unhappy marriage, her dependent relationship with her son, her epilepsy and her experience of exile. Set mainly in London in the interwar period, it’s a poignant and evocative portrait of this unhappy woman who so much wanted to be a writer but whose status as a Jewish woman of that era made this very difficult. The book opens on the eve of WWI and ends with Carr, now a journalist, going to Germany to cover the trial of Nazi war criminal Ilse Koch. Esther Kreitman was one of the first Jewish writers in Yiddish, and here she receives recognition and tribute from her son. Fragmentary and incomplete as it is, I nevertheless really enjoyed it and hope that it will encourage other readers to discover her.

THE FORGOTTEN SINGER: The Exiled Sister of I.J. and Isaac Bashevis Singer is a recounting of the insufficiently-remembered sister of Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer. Apparently writing and authorship were a genetic legacy in the Singer lineage, although Esther's son Moishele (later Anglicized to Maurice for the sake of career) did not find the flow of writing as easily as his Uncle Isaac, yet his perseverance and determination were strong. His mother, Esther Singer Kreitman, was a powerful storyteller, even at a time fraught with danger (World War I, the interwar era 1918-1938, and then World War II.) I expected from a feminist viewpoint to learn that Esther had been downtrodden due to gender and to the time period, not so far removed from Victorianism. Possibly those are facts; but this narrative reveals also that Esther was an individual of strong opinions, disparaging of her spouse, expecting her son to remain at her side for her lifetime, both of them gather at the kitchen table--the heart of the household, both patiently writing. In this too, as in her life and marriage, she encountered disappointment. PM

The Forgotten Singer by Maurice Carr is an intriguing glimpse into the lives of the author's mother, writer Esther Singer Kreitman, and more so into his own. Esther's struggle with epilepsy and strained relationship with her son are highlighted. Her writing was evidently as good as her better-known brothers but she remains virtually unheard of. Repercussions of war to Jews such as themselves were particularly brutal.

The writing is abrupt and direct, interesting and engrossing. However, though full of anecdotes, it has less personal flair than I had hoped, perhaps due to the writing style which at times seems cool. I have read many, many Holocaust and WWII books and have often noted that the years between the wars are less written about. I appreciate it is done here.

If you are a Nonfiction reader seeking to learn more about Esther Singer Kreitman, you will learn about her family with less about her than you may expect. I don't feel I know the essence of who she was. Still worth reading if interested in the topic, though.

My sincere thank you to White Goat Press and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of this unflinching and book about a fascinating family.

This was a wonderful book about a person who probably no one ever hears about, but certainly deserves attention and recognition.

I selected this title because it is supposed to be a biography of the author Esther Kreitman-sister of Isaac Bashevis Singer and their older brother I.J. Singer. I am very well read in the history of Yiddish literature and I know the circumstances of Kreitman’s life being both a woman but a writer ignored by her much more famous family writers. But this memoir tells almost nothing about Kreitman’s career or the struggles she faced being a female author at her time.
Almost all of the book is about her son,an extremely uninteresting person who writes in a scattered manner pieces of his and her life. It is hard to understand what the focus of this book is supposed to be as so little of the writing has to do with the author and way too much about her son. Even these scenes are so fragmented and difficult to follow.
Overall the book is a major disappointment. Writing about Esther Kreitman is essential for understanding her vital life and the plight of women writing in Yiddish at the time. The only successful portrayal of Yiddish women writers came out in the 1980s and this book does nothing to further to enlighten one’s understanding of how difficult it was for women at the time be heard. Esther Kreitman deserves a biography that entirely deals with her own unique life and the complicated relationship with her two famous brothers. Readers don’t need another book where the narrator is a man placing himself in front of the important female story. I have no idea what the point of this book is and why anyone works want to,publish this very much misleading stoty.

I loved this book. I found it more of a memoir of Carr than a biography of his mother but mostly I found it to be an excellent look at Jewish life in the interwar period. I enjoyed Carr’s writing style, a blend of casualness and crispness. The story never gets bogged down and it held my attention from start to finish. This book is well worth reading. Thank you to Netgalley and White Goat Press for the advance reader copy.