Author Autobahn

Getting Enough, by author Leonard Rosmarin, reveals a scandalous portrayal of a beautiful seductive Jewish Diva named Vera Rose, whose life is at a tipping point and ready to implode.  

The story delves into the disheartened life of a woman trapped between a mid-life crisis and the affliction of an unfulfilling sexless marriage. Vera is compelled to escape her repressive existence after an explosive argument with her husband, Sidney. She reflects on her life and decides to unleash her true self, taking her niece’s husband, Boris, as her lover. As relationships begin to crumble around her, Vera is surprisingly struck by the realization that she has unfairly misjudged Sidney – in truth he is the despicable wretch and sexual failure she loves to hate. Together, they unexpectedly manage to work out a loving reconciliation making Getting Enough an irresistible read that leaves a melodramatic impression.   

Reviews

"Leonard Rosmarin's novel Getting Enough is a work of genius. The characters fairly jump off the page, they are so full of energy and life. Even the cover design imaginatively conveys the theme of repressed energy and stifled desire attempting to break out of the box of convention and hypocrisy. The work, coarse in language conveying a society that is struggling to find values and meaning, succeeds in resolving conflict through an ending that is at once realistic and uplifting. The author is to be commended for his great artistic talent and gifted imagination."

Professor Paul Socken
University of Waterloo

"Getting Enough is an entertaining read as it leads you through the hidden feelings of a family.   A surprising and humorous book!"

Bob & Susie Davis

"My first impression of Getting enough by Leonard Rosmarin is of a splendid, fluid, rather classical style. The story implies some crude words, and the author uses them boldly wherever necessary.

Each novel is unique, and this one maybe more than others: despite the theme it is more psychological than erotic. The narrator describes a total immersion in a world of love and lust. He describes the feelings and inner thoughts of many characters, most of them part of the Jewish family of Vera and Sidney, a middle-aged couple on the verge of implosion, apparently beyond reconciliation.

The evolution of relationships is brilliantly built, each action or decision being described by the monologue or reflexions of the character. The narrator remains heterodiegetic but knows how to integrate the personalities and various points of view like in a well built screenplay."

Michel Goeldlin 

Article on Getting Enough

written by Journalist, Julia Le, with the Mississauga News

March 25, 2009 12:57 PM - Leonard Rosmarin began writing a novel 25 years ago, but found little time to complete it given his busy schedule as a professor of French literature. Read more of this Article

Listen to Radio Interview

About the Author

Leonard Rosmarin was a university professor for over forty years. He published nine books on various aspects of French literature, presented hundreds of papers at learned conferences and has written many articles.  The French Government has also decorated him twice for exceptional service in the cause of French letters. He feels as though he’s been writing all his life and writes fiction to see more clearly into himself and the human condition.

The inspiration for this book comes from his fascination with the extended Jewish family he grew up in. Even though Leonard is currently retired, he has recently published two scholarly works and has translated one of the finest plays to come out of France in the past 50 years.

Leonard was an expert on the Advice.LoveDetour website and wrote The Ice Queen episodes for the site.  He's a self-confessed opera addict and has written a book about the relationship between literature and opera titled When Literature Becomes Opera.

Leonard was featured in a video by Ontario, Canada's Mississauga News. Watch the video by clicking HERE.

Book Banter

By Stuart Nulman

Getting Enough by Leonard Rosmarin (Strategic Book Publishing, $26.50)

What happens when a middle aged couple find themselves in a mid-life crisis of their own, especially when it comes to doing some nooky … or not getting enough nooky? Leonard Rosmarin, a retired professor of literature from Brock University, gives that situation some consideration in his novel entitled Getting Enough.

It tells the story of Vera, an angry, frustrated middle-aged woman who catches her wealthy second husband Sidney in an affair of the heart with a younger woman. As a result, Vera reflects on her life (she lost her first husband at a young age in a car accident), not to mention how she is thoroughly repulsed by Sidney, especially when it comes to intimacy (or lack thereof).

So what does poor, frustrated Vera do? She embarks upon an affair of the heart of her own with Boris, who is the husband of her niece Charmaine.

Will this bit of revenge infidelity be enough for Vera to get even with her philandering weasel of a husband? Or does she still have feelings of affection for the guy?

Getting Enough reads like one of those bawdy British sex farces that were filmed throughout the 1970s (and Rosmarin has authority to do so, because he has studied, lectured and written about different aspects of French bawdy farcical literature during his 40 years as a professor of literature, and based the novel on his experiences of growing up with an extended Jewish family). Although the text can be quite sexually explicit at times, the book shows with a lot of reflection, honesty (and quite a lot of vitriol) the hazards of the institution of marriage amongst the middle-aged, and all the infidelity that goes with the territory. It’s almost like an "R" rated version of "The Honeymooners" without the "Bang, zoom to the moon!"

So if you see that your long term marriage is not getting you enough whoopee, take a look at Getting Enough and believe me, you will be getting your farcical fill of whoopee, nooky, battling, love and affection (but not necessarily in that order).

Stuart Nulman can be reached at bookbanter@hotmail.com