A gentle satire in which the cultural assumptions of American suburbia in 1960s are quietly pulled apart by encounters with outliers from very different backgrounds. Brilliant. It is the summer of 1960. The times, they are a'changing. The social conservatism of Dwight Eisenhower is about to give way to the progressive ambitions of John F. Kennedy. And three brothers, brought up in a suburb community in upstate New York, are travelling across the Atlantic to Austria, which only 15 years earlier had been part of the German Reich, to spend part of the summer with one of their grandfathers for the first time. Michael Ladner's new novel is an exploration of changing cultural landscapes among people insulated from the challenges of disruption and those exposed to the worst of it. The novel tracks the family's experience of childhood discontent and adolescence, marital disharmony and endurance, and the bitterness of persecution. And it watches as they are forced to confront their most secret longings and Old World origins, with results both comic and tragic. For readers brought up on John Updike, Joan Didion and Woodstock, Ladner reveals a Sixties very far from counter-cultural experimentation. At the centre of the novel is the brothers' nanny, Mrs. Ruby Woodbine, a widow from the South whose blend of folk wisdom and country prejudices provides an ironic counterpoint to the family's misadventures, triumphs and disasters. A quietly brilliant piece of writing. AUTHOR: Michael Ladner was born in Princeton, NJ, and is said to have been patted on the head by Albert Einstein as a baby. Thus encouraged he went on to take a BA from Harvard, an MA from New York University, and a PhD in Philosophy from Claremont Graduate University, since when he has completed further studies at the San Francisco Art Institute and School of Visual Arts. He has taught American and European History, Art History, Psychology and English, and lived mostly in Brooklyn and Manhattan. In 2006, he and his wife moved to California. Mrs Woodbine's Prejudices is his third novel.
