The forever street /

This 1873-1938 odyssey of a maverick Jewish family in Vienna has the mythic float of a Chagall painting--with outsize eccentrics, blips of fantastic images, zesty movement, and an underwash of melancholy. In 1873 journeyman-smith Berek Spiegel-glass, sprung from a decidedly ""garlicky background"" in the near-deserted village of Varungy, is lured to Vienna by non-Jewish, bumptious, sleek Alois Schall--who'll design the medals that Berek will make. There's an audience (like a horrid fairy tale) with the Emperor, who--bemused by Berek's tears--allows him to set up his business in ""Turk Place"": a six-house complex, each house with a ""comely little minaret,"" built in 1683 to contain the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa. But Turk Place now contains a band of violent gypsies, Berek's future bride Tamarah, and the ""Brick""--supposedly the one brick remaining from the sacred Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. (Jews can bypass the rabbis and reach God directly here.) Tamarah and Berek marry; the gypsies are removed, with much steam and noise; from Varungy comes mammoth baker Riddah with her small husband Boas. And Berek works like a tornado--stamping medals, tunneling, piping, receiving visits from an odd aristocrat (who arrives on a huge steam tricycle). What's missing, then? Sons, of course: after 16 years of hoping, Tamarah finally gives birth to twins Ferdinand and Conrad before dying. So the perfumed Hester takes her place as #2 wife, producing daughter Ilona. (The nuptial bliss of Berek and Hester is preceded by operatic conflict.) But the sons--who in boyhood learn about the Brick and the alphabet by riding steam-powered desks through the underground tunnel--grow up to be poles apart. Ferdinand, stolid and responsible, will marry Riddah's daughter--and knows that his frightening destiny is to guard his father from harm; Conrad, the ladies' man, wonders what the world's all about. Meanwhile, there are comic-opera dealings, by Berek and Ferdinand, with a Prince and pasteboard officials; after WW I turmoil, familiar faces turn sinister; and in the poisonous 1930s the family will escape--except for stubborn Berek, whose ""little street is forever."" An imaginative, semi-allegorical evocation of a promising past and a dead future, with conventional saga sentiment richly overshadowed by Morton's flamboyant invention: steady, surprisingly offbeat entertainment for The Rothschilds readership and others too. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.