CROSSING DELANCEY

CROSSING DELANCEY by Susan Sandler was read for the Jewish Literature Reading Challenge, the Read Your Own Books Challenge and the New Author Challenge.

I picked this book because I absolutely loved the movie Crossing Delancey with Amy Irving and Peter Riegert. When I bought this on Amazon, I didn't realize it was a play, not a novel. But I thought I'd give it a try anyway.

How do I write about a play? It was short and didn't give too much insight into the characters. It was hard to make a connection with them in that short period of time.

So I pulled out my copy of the movie and watched that again. I wanted to see how the two compared, as Susan Sandler also wrote the screenplay for the movie.

About the movie:

Single, attractive, 30-something Isabelle ("Izzy") Grossman has a rent-controlled apartment in uptown Manhattan and a burgeoning career in publishing. "I'm happy," she says. "She lives alone in a room, like a dog," counters Bubbie, her tradition-minded grandmother. So Bubbie hires a matchmaker who finds Izzy a marriage prospect: a man who runs a street-side pickle stand.

Izzy is appalled. Is the man who offers "a joke and a pickle for only a nickle" her Mr. Right? And will she somehow, someway end up Crossing Delancey - the street that divides her world from his - and find love?

As a rule, I don't like movies that are made from books. I like to read the books and form the pictures in my mind. I like to see the characters as I envision them. But in this case, I felt the movie was better, much better.

By seeing Izzy and Bubbie and Sam and seeing their expressions, I learned so much more about them. There was a character in the play, Tyler Moss, an author. In the movie, his part was fleshed out (his name was changed to Anton Moss) and the interaction between him and Izzy made so much more sense.

Would I recommend reading this play? No, unless you're really "into" reading plays. But would I recommend watching this movie? Oh YES. I reaffirmed today why this is one of my all time favorites.