La Bobe.

• Author: Mujica Barbara

One of Mexico's most respected playwrights, Sabina Berman is a four-time winner of the Premio Nacional de Teatro as well as of numerous other honors. She is also a poet and a journalist whose work has appeared in countless publications. In her autobiographical novel La bobe ("grandmother" in Yiddish), Berman recreates her Mexican Jewish girlhood and brings to life an array of characters that reflect the evolving nature of Mexican Jewry in the fifties and sixties.

Like thousands of others, the Glickmans escape from Poland during the Second World War, only to find the doors of the United States closed to Jewish refugees. Living off the proceeds from a few diamonds that Mrs. Glickman - la bobe - astutely hides in the fillings of her teeth, the family makes its way to Mexico where Mr. Glickman starts a brush factory that will eventual restore his fortune.

Although narrated with great affection, this is no sentimental tale of idealized immigrant grandparents. Berman takes a hard look at herself and her family and sees the flaws as well as the charm. Told from a child's point of view, La bobe captures poignantly the heartbreak and confusion of Sabi (the young Berman), the little girl who must learn to come to terms with the imperfections of human nature - including those of her own parents and grandparents. El zayde - the grandfather - is a selfish, skirt-chasing bully whose libido leads him to abandon his wife of forty years, only to return later. A chronic complainer who finds fault with everyone and everything, Zayde alienates his own daughter, who assures la bobe that she is better off without him.

Bobe's daughter (Sabi's mother), who is undergoing psychoanalysis and finally becomes a psychologist, is a modern woman of the fifties who rejects the kind conventional servility to men that Bobe represents. She condemns Bobe for overprotecting her children, for hiding from them Zayde's infidelity and even the horror surrounding their exodus from Poland. By doing so, according the Sabi's mother, Bobe has created weak, troubled sons and daughters who live in a fantasy world and are unable to cope with the complexities of reality.

As Sabi watches the conflict between her mother and grandmother unfold, she develops an appreciation for Bobe's...