‘Tell Me How This Ends Well,’ by David Samuel Levinson

[...] some recent American Jewish fiction imagines a dire fate for the Jewish state itself.

Using the rampant bigotry as ambience for a dark and deadly comedy of bad manners, Levinson focuses on the Jacobsons, a Jewish family that is unhappy in its own miserable way.

The patriarch, 70-year-old Julian Jacobson, is an abusive, self-centered bully to his long-suffering wife, Roz, and their three children.

Mo, 42, a frustrated movie actor, cuckolded husband of a woman named Pandora, and doting father of a set of twins and a set of triplets, is the eldest.

Roz is suffering from a rare, fatal lung disease that requires her to be hooked up to an oxygen tank.

The climax of the reunion will be a seder, which, to revive his moribund Hollywood career, Mo has arranged to be broadcast live as reality TV.

Mo’s swimming pool is empty because, parched from a prolonged drought, California imposes thousands of dollars in penalties to discourage frivolous use of water.

[...] no responsible reviewer would reveal how Levinson’s novel ends, only that it is fortified with surprises and, for all its slapstick props, including a dead peacock floating in a swimming pool and a Heimlich maneuver performed during a nationally televised seder, is unexpectedly affecting.

For all the narrative pranks and pratfalls, the book is a moving account of the rich complexities of maternal love and the bewildering ecstasies of sibling rivalry.