The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel

There are magical moments in this immigrant “American Dream” story that begins with the arrival of Malka Treynovsky in 1913 at Ellis Island. Gilman’s recreation of lower East Side Manhattan is remarkable and deftly painted. It’s easy to imagine the squalor, the heartbreak, the struggles of adapting to a new homeland. The beginning of the book is a mesmerizing journey, filled with beautifully created characters. The transformation of Malka Treynovsky to Lillian Dunkle and her building of an ice cream empire is spellbinding. However, it is unfortunate that Mrs. Dunkle never rises to become an endearing character. When a character is flawed, it gives reality to a story, but for the central character to be so unlikeable completely delegitimizes our caring for her. For example, no matter the reasons for murder, nothing can erase the fact that a person can choose whether to commit that murder. Once done, there is no way back. In Lillian’s case, she has countless reasons for her selfishness, self-serving actions, and the coldness of her attitudes. With Lillian, we are left wondering where her heart is? And why should I care about her?Her father’s transformation is even more unsettling. He was a schlemiel from the start, but as the story continues, he does things that take him out of the realm of believability. Once I lost that thread, the story became more challenging to endure.Still, for all of its faults, this is a good read with lots of historical shading. I found myself wanting to find out what would happen next. The history of ice creaming making was fantastically threaded throughout, and the spectacular rise of a cunning woman in a world that subjugated women to the backseat and second-class citizenship was powerfully portrayed, but this reader’s connection to the characters was never strong.

This is a story written with chapters that flip back and forth from past to present. Its protagonist, Malka (modernized to Lillian), is given a clear, spirited voice as she takes the reader through her life as a child fleeing Europe, struggling to survive in America and her later successes in business. It's just as easy for the reader to be swept back into the time of Malka's childhood as it is to read and understand her in her later life. I found myself thinking of well-known personalities as I read this story, such as the likes of Leona Helmsley, Martha Stewart, and the TV personality featured in Carvel ads.Really, while this isn't a page-turner, it's quite well written. Descriptions of life in New York's lower East side tenements is vivid and author Susan Jane Gilman gives us an equally well-portrayed understanding of the creation of ice cold confections--from Italian ices to the soft custard of today.Beyond being a good story, it's an interesting way to learn about life in the tenements, manufacturing in the early 20th century, and the hard labor that went into success in a new country.

This was not one of my favorite books, even though the era in which it took place earlier on is one of my favorites for book settings. Malka/Lillian had a horrible early life so a lot of what and who she became was based on her difficulties. None of the characters were endearing to me and it is difficult for me to enjoy a book when I don't like the cast. I did find enough of the book interesting and probably would have read it even if I didn't think I would love it. I had high hopes for this book, but none of them were fulfilled. Of course all books can't be favorites.

A good story about a young girl, Malva Treynovsky emigrating from Russia in the early 1900's for... where? They start to go for South Africa but thanks to the father and a little unwitting help from Malva they end up in New York. She goes from being crippled and abandoned due to a street accident to being a very, very rich woman in the early 1980s as the queen of an ice cream empire.I admit to having had a romantic view of immigrant life in New York in the early 20th century. That view has been thoroughly dispelled. The best part of the book is the unrelenting look at the squalor and poverty of that time. In Russia there was the prospect of murder at the hands of the ruling class during the pogroms. In New York City there was the prospect of death because you just couldn't make it: you get sick or injured and there is no hand up. When (if) you read "The Bully Pulpit" by Doris Kearns Goodwin you'll have a better appreciation of Theodore Roosevelt crusading efforts to make life better in the tenements.It's said that money can't buy happiness; this novel shows how true that can me. Malva becomes Lillian Dunkle and though she marries her sweetheart and becomes impossibly rich, she is never really happy. Indeed, she is miserable and makes most people around her miserable. I want to be careful and not rate the book lower just because the protagonist is so disagreeable. My biggest problem with the book is that the Jewish/Italian/New York dialect comes and goes; we get way too much "so sue me, darling" juxtaposed with otherwise 6:00 news anchor language.In the end, this is an okay summer read to catch the arch of American history from pre-World War I through the Reagan administration. You'll learn some things about the entrepreneurship spirit as well as ice cream making.

the book is interesting in its discussion of the origination of soft ice cream. I really did not like the women who became the Queen of Orchard street. Although she had a very tough life as a child, and her family abandoned her for some reason I had no empathy. She just was not a nice person from the get go and she got worse as she got older. I also felt the book really needed a good editor.

I thought that the whole book was on a free kindle offer , so having noticed good press reviews I jumped at it. I then learned that it was just the first 3 chapters and I think that this should have been made clearer. Naughty marketing!As for the 3 chapters, they were excellent , interesting , detailed and certainly had me hooked. The Jewish frases and humour punctuate and add to the narative. The Ice Cream Queen is certainly a young lady to be recconed with and I shall now buy the book to enjoy the rest of her story.

I knew I was going to love this book when I laughed out loud in the third paragraph. I read The Ice Cream Queen compulsively, happy to dig into it and bereft when it was over. Lillian Dunkle is an irresistible character -- think Joan Rivers meets Leona Helmsley. My devotion to her did not let up, despite the trouble she got herself into. Susan Gilman is a master storyteller, and I was constantly (and happily) surprised by the plot turns and the unexpected places she took me: from the colorful streets of NY’s Lower East Side to a WWII ice cream barge (!) to the swank Upper East Side. This book is wise, smart and full of heart. I can’t wait to see what Susan Gilman will do next.

Funny, poignant, extremely well written. Everyone knows a Lillian Dunkle, or people who are an amalgamation of her. This is a book to just enjoy, hopefully as much as I have.

This is a masterpiece of writing. The author should be proud. The book is multilayered. Your heart bled for the dreadful rejections and betrayal the heroine endured. They made you sympathetic toward her line of thinking even though it wasn't nearly always honourable. You cheered for her when she succeeded and when justice came you cheered on the one hand. On the other hand you were sure that this really was justice. Another take away was the way things work and work out for the Jews in business even though they don't always make themselves very likeable. But things tend to work out for them. Their belief that they must be at the top and have a monopoly is faulty. There is enough to go around. But it still tends to be their attitude. I repeat. A masterpiece of writing.

Although being fiction, the novel is based on the American history and is also the history of ice cream making and TV shows. The book is written like an autobiography, Lillian Dunkle tells the story of her live, switching between present and past - with many cliffhangers in the chapters about the events in the past, to keep the story going and to maintain the interest of the readers.This story without doubt is very interesting, because it shows the dangerous, poor conditions, the immigrants had to deal with in the “American Dream”, just to survive. But it was quite difficult for me to finish a 572 pages novel, when I absolutely can find no sympathy for the main protaginist Lillian Dunkle. From the very beginning, she is egoistic, steals and lies if it is necessary to keep her business growing and earning more and more money. Maybe understandable from her background, she had to be a fighter, but as it is fiction, I had liked her to be a little bit more human and likeable.