Cynthia Freeman Novels

Biography – Cynthia Freeman

Cynthia Freeman’s novels have appealed to many readers. New York Times Book Review writer Mervin Wexler pointed to Freeman’s deft storytelling, her understanding of family dynamics, and her sometimes “vivid” writing as elements that contributed to her having sold over 22 million copies of such novels as Portraits, Come Pour the Wine, and No Time for Tears, in twenty-three languages. Freeman professed a lifelong affinity for writing, but she never seriously considered writing a novel until she was idled at age 50 by a five-year illness. To occupy herself during that period, she wrote A World Full of Strangers, a multi-generational novel focusing on a man from New York’s Lower East Side who goes to great lengths to conceal his ethnic background. Not only does he change his name and forbid his wife to tell their son about their heritage, he indulges in some anti-Semitism himself. The reading public responded favorably to Freeman’s first novel, buying over two million copies of A World Full of Strangers.

Freeman’s subsequent novels have been as eagerly received as her first. Maude McDaniel commented on the author’s appeal in the Washington Post Book World. McDaniel described Come Pour the Wine as being, “like all Freeman’s books, compulsively readable… The reader comes to like these people, and to want to be in on everything that happens to them.”

No Time for Tears was Freeman’s most “ambitious” novel, according to Mona E. Simpson in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. New York Times Book Review contributor Mel Watkins agreed that No Time For Tears is “more than a generational saga; Miss Freeman has attempted to depict the struggle for a Jewish state through the lives of her characters.” Watkins felt that the book was ambitious in its scope, but declared that “Miss Freeman relates this tale of struggle and courage in heartfelt, almost inspirational prose.” She concluded that, especially in its personal scenes, “the novel has a great deal of poignancy.”

A World Full of Strangers

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