Gladys Stern dedicated this book to John Galsworthy, and it's fitting as this is a family saga on a par with the Forsytes.
Following the vast Jewish Rakonitz family - from Napoleonic times to the 1920s; from Pressburg to Vienna and ultimately London...but with offshoots all over Europe...from 'typical' Jews to those who adopt Englishness....it's staggering how the author gets so many characters into just 300 pages.
But the central character is the eponymous matriarch, Anastasia, alternately charming, autocratic...utterly self sacrificing towards the family, yet ruling them with a rod of iron. And her granddaughter Toni...motivated, modern, yet deeply caught up, too, in the pre-eminence of family and the magic of her ancestry:
"They needed not to be collected always on the same estate in the same land, steadfast and unmoving, like the old families of England, or the clans of Scotland. They were a tribe of nomads, and they settled and moved on again, and were legally granted other nationalities, and bought other people's houses and gardens, and left them again, and they spread and spread without rooting, and scattered and scattered without rooting; but invincibly the face survived. Just that one inspiration, br some strength and for some purpose it survived, and you could never tell where it would break through, or in whom..."

Unputdownable. ( )

This was one of the best books I've read in a long time. It is the first book of three in the family Rakonitz chronicles. The characters were so well developed. The male members of the family, were considered weak, and only good for making money. But the fact that their characters were weak showed us how strong the women were. And how they rebuilt the family after the economic crash in the late nineteenth century. ( )

A few years ago I picked up a small small book in a second-hand bookshop. It was plain, simple and unadorned, but I picked it up because I had spotted the name of a Virago author. G B Stern, and because its title made me curious. I hadn’t read any of her books before, though I had the two that were reissued as Virago Modern Classics on my shelves, but I decided it was worth taking home.

I loved that book. I fell in love with her fiction, written with such intelligence and wit, and I have to tell you that her multiple memoirs – where she writes of anything and everything that has captured her interest – are sublime.

I can understand why she’s still relatively obscure; because she wrote a great many books, because they are wildly diverse, because, and because – I am given to understand – some of the are not as strong as the others. I have to say though, that I have yet to pick up one of her books and not be smitten.

I heard great things about ‘The Matriarch’, I read that it was inspired by the author’s own family history, I saw that she returned to the same family in a number of later books, and so when The 1924 Club arrived I took it as a sign that it was time for me to meet The Matriarch and her family.

The story opens early in the 19th century, and sweeps forward and across Europe, as the fabulously wealthy Rakonitz family prospers and grows. The women of the family reign over houses and homes, where sons bring wives home to live with their mothers, grandchildren belong as much to the whole family as to their parents, and that there are other ways to live is not even contemplated. Meanwhile, the men go out to do business, and are free to indulge what ever interests they may have.

The stream of names, of relationships, of conversations, of family occasions could have been overwhelming; but there was such warmth, such vibrancy that I was completely captivated. I might not have been able to tell you who was who, or what was significant, but I saw the whole picture and it was glorious.

It was at the start of the 20th century, when Anastasia Rakonitz, married to her first cousin Paul, stood at the head of her family, that the story proper began. She adored her family; she was generous, she was demonstrative, she was practical, and there was nothing that she would not do for each and every one of them.

But there was no way but her way; and she would not even contemplate that the family would not always live together and do things as it always had.

Her word was law. Her family had everything they could ever want; except the freedom to set their own courses in life.

Some of her family were oblivious; some of them were comfortable; but for some of them life was difficult.

Imagine the position of a daughter who could not snare a suitable husband, and who when she did could not present her mother with a grandchild. Imagine the position of the bride of a son who had ‘married out’, who would not have the home of her own that she had anticipated, who would be trapped in a house ruled over by another woman who did things so very differently to the woman who raised hers.

There were cracks, but it was a string of bad investments that swallowed the family fortune and destroyed a way of life. The big houses and the family treasures had to be sold, and simpler accommodation had to be found, and simpler ways of living established.

Anastasia’s health was beginning to fail, she couldn’t entirely comprehend what her family’s crash would mean; but she fought to hold her family together, and to live by the principles that had served her and her forbearers so well or so very long.

But her menfolk abandoned her; one took his own life, one fled overseas, one succumbed to ill health ….

That meant that her grandchildren, no longer wealthy, no longer able to rely on family connections, had to establish themselves in a changing world. Through their efforts, the family stayed afloat. They took on more and more responsibility, but they were still treated as the children of the family.

Toni, the eldest child of Anastasia’s eldest child, worked hard to establish herself as a businesswoman, and she found success and she felt pride is what she was able to achieve. But she still loved her family, she wanted to restore pride in her family, she wanted to clear the debts that ‘The Uncles’ had left behind.

On one hand she was a modern woman; on the other she was the woman that Anastasia had raised and moulded.

Could she reconcile the two?

A wealth of stories, relationships, events and incidents, is wrapped around this central story. Some are in the foreground, some are in the background, and it feels a little messy sometimes, but it feels like life. And because the story was so well told, the details so well told, the descriptions so very vivid, I was pulled right into the homes and the lives of this colourful, exotic, suffocating family.

I loved some of them, I was infuriated by others; but I believed in them all.

I would have liked to learn a little more about some of the family, about some parts of the family, but there is only so much that can be fitted into a single book.

The story starts slowly, but it gather pace and by the end it is utterly compelling.

That G B Stern could paint such a vibrant picture of a family, on such a grand scale, with so many intriguing details to pick out, is wonderful.

It works as a study of the ties that bind families together, of the way those ties can pull you back, and of why we sometimes need to loosen or escape those ties.

It works as a study of the power of women; it was women who ran the home and family, and it was women who had to take charge when the family found itself in crisis, and find new ways of living for themselves, for their parents, for their children.

And it works as family saga; full of wit, colour, and intelligence.

I have two of the sequels – and I need to track down two more. ( )

The Matriarch is the beginning of a fictional family chronicle, centered on the Rakonitz family, a closely knit tribe of Jewish Europeans who weather reversals in fortune, family scandal, wars, travel, and generational change, while never losing faith in the ultimate importance of family. The first chapter offers a series of vignettes that provide a summary of the early ancestors of the family, Babette and Simon Rakonitz, from whom this particular family tree is engendered. Aside from those two, a dizzying array of people are introduced, contributing to the feeling of an immense family, flung across the continent. By the second chapter, however, the narrative centers in on Anastasia, Babette's granddaughter, and later Toni, Anastasia's granddaughter. The story spends just a small amount of time covering Anastasia's youth; enough to show us her stubborn, reckless, generous, and loving character, and set the stage for the grand matriarch of the family she becomes. She ages quickly, producing a prodigious amount of children, and many grandchildren, although much less than she wishes. Toni is her first grandchild, and she inherits the burning passion for family that her grandmother possesses. She is destined to take over the role of matriarch when Anastasia succumbs to old age, but that realization awaits the end of the novel. After building up Anastasia's close and extended family, the story settles down to a slower rate, and examines the momentous events that begin when Anastasia is an older woman, still firmly in control, and the fallout and changes that continue until Anastasia is declining and her grandchildren, Toni among them, begin to take over as leaders in the family.

When Anastasia and her brothers and sisters, the current rulers, are in their middle years, a great catastrophe befalls everyone. Maximilian, the most influential Uncle, invests heavily in a ruby mine, and the other male members of the family follow his lead. Sadly, this mine is a fake, salted with gorgeous rubies, and the vast family fortune, built up from valuable jewels, is dashed away in a moment. Several of the men die from the shock, one commits suicide, and the end result is that the family is led by the women, and Uncle Louis, who wishes he had died as well.

The drastic change from rich opulence to low middle class is difficult, and each family member handles it in different ways. Anastasia can't part with her generous nature and her eccentricities, even if she has no more money to support them, and the family is constantly trying to fix her messes. Toni, a delicate natured girl thanks to her grandmother's great sin (Anastasia married her first cousin, and most of her children and grandchildren pay the price for this folly), is forced to join the work force and throw aside the dancing and fun she so loves. Nonetheless, the women of the younger generation are more modern, and many of them, Toni included, are successful in their enterprises. Through their efforts, the family stays afloat. Eventually, they take on more and more responsibility for the Rakonitz clan, although people from Anastasia's generation still try to treat them like children.

Along with the plot of the changing lifestyle in the family, a few romantic entanglements are prominent. Most important is that between Toni and Danny, her first cousin. Their love is dangerous and forbidden, not only because Toni does not want to repeat Anastasia's mistake, and visit ill health on her progeny by marrying such a close family member, but also because they are as much enemies as lovers. They spend more time fighting than anything else. Also, and certainly the deal breaker, Danny hates the family. He constantly fights to escape it. This tragic romance is accompanied by relationships that receive much less focus, such as Richard and Molly. In fact, I wish these episodes were further explored, and some of the other conflicts minimized, because they interested me much more. Herein lies a major flaw in the novel. Stern never fully develops the human conflicts that would make this reading more appealing. She devotes too much time to establishing the family, and painting pretty pictures. I acknowledge that her descriptive writing is lovely, but it needs to be paired with a more dynamic plot. The difficulties faced by the Rakonitz's following the crash is a compelling story, but she never raises the stakes with this idea. The interactions amongst the characters provide fertile ground for tension and conflict, but are presented summarily. For instance, the scenario surrounding Richard and his love for Molly and his seduction by a woman in his family - that could be a book in itself. Yet Stern only spends a chapter or so, and her focus is on how the older generation tries to manage the problem in their own old-fashioned way. As soon as Richard makes the decision to be true to himself, that whole narrative is dropped, and the conclusion only alluded to in the epilogue. Also, her male characters are underrepresented, and in a novel where the women dominate, it's understandable, but she still incorporates several men that are key in the family, and they needed more complexity. Danny was the only male character who felt rounded. To counter these criticisms, the writing has an easy feel, and I moved through it quickly. The settings and descriptions of people and places are vivid, and Stern does a great job of showing how the family has shifted over the span of two generations, and what links still bind them together. The layered idea of family identity is deep well in this book. The novel has so much potential. A family rich in character, with history, and strong women; full of old and new family scandals, and dramatic upheavals; I just wish the author had better developed key points in the narrative and the pacing and the characters. ( )

If I demanded stellar writing, deeply drawn characters, a dynamite plot, thematic insights, or an intricate structure of every book I read, I would not have been so pleased with The Matriarch. Gaining a window onto a people and time long gone, however, is a treat that I'm glad not to have been denied.
The Matriarch is the first book in a series of five novels dealing with the Rakonitz family: "Israelite," non-religious, wealthy, cosmopolitan, bound to each other and by their own code of conduct. The action centers on the matriarch Anastasia and her granddaughter Toni, a new matriarch in the making. A very handy family tree keeps relationships straight and shows the spread of the family from Austria down to Italy and across to England where Anastasia houses her own branch in her house in Holland Terrace. The organization of the book is fairly chronological as we see the strong women and their more fragile men repeat patterns from generation to generation and learn how all of them respond to the loss of their fortune.
I will look forward to the next in the series (A Deputy Was King) because I felt the writing gained strength as the book progressed. The last fifty pages or so were riveting. (The other titles in the series are Mosaic, Shining and Free, and The Young Matriarch.) ( )