RaveNewsweek...a powerful yet tender narrative that explores the tug of war between the past and the future for immigrant families in America ... A Replacement Life is as real and vibrant as the south Brooklyn neighborhoods...where the book\'s older characters live. These personalities are not shortchanged in complexity or depth of description. They are neither saints nor sinners but something in between. Initially overlooked by the narrator as hopelessly outdated and senile, this community of displaced, long-suffering survivors gains importance with each passing chapter ... Fishman\'s own mastery of both Russian and English, especially when describing people and places, keeps A Replacement Life from bogging down in revelations and epiphanies. Some of his descriptions are laugh-outloud funny ... Fishman never loses the reader\'s trust. No line in this book rings false, no character is unheard, no event seems like a plot device. The novel is like a story that a grandparent might tell you at the dinner table—one of those stories that the young may ignore only to regret their impatience later.
