"Gangsters" starts with an interesting idea: a somewhat shadowy evangelical Christian man begins a love affair with an observant Jewish woman. Both are married, and she is busy with household duties and a teaching position. Nevertheless, she seems to find copious amounts of time for trysts which include fairly strange and not too loving sexual intimacies. The author only hints at what kinds of real conflicts of conscience and faith this setup might produce. Instead, Zimroth treats the reader to a few references to some of the doctrinal and philosophical distinctions each character has and then conveniently pushes the story past them like a rock skipping across the surface of a pond. I kept asking myself how people who apparently exercised a higher than average commitment to their faith could have such shallow conversations about how their adulterous affair and the attendant lying and deception affected them. In the end, we get to know little about these people or their worlds except their sexual appetites and quirky friends. In short, the characters did not seem to correspond to real people with real lives. Too bad. The idea is brimming with potential. Plunging in more deeply to these characters might have given us more to think about than "what kind of sex are they going to have next?"

Gangsters doesnt idealize real life or provide fluff and sap for the storybook-ending reader. It is a real novel about real people who, like the people you know, don't have it all figured out and do have inconsistencies and are deeply complicated. That is why it is such a great read--the characters are all so well developed that they remind you of your best friends, your old boyfriends, your ex-husband, or your nemesis. Zimroth adds the religious dimension proving that she is not only an insightful reader of human character but also an intellectual, and this dimension adds to the complexity of her characters and their dilemnas.

I'm not sure what I expected from this book. Perhaps a glimpse inside the world of a dancer that has not been whitewashed? An honest account of how a dancer's life is as painful as it can be magical? Well whatever I hoped for, this book did not provide it. Written in a style that I found aggravating ( I wish I could explain WHY but words fail me), I finished it only because I had spent my money on it, not because I was intrigued or drawn in. I've read other customer reviews about this book and it seems you either love it or hate it. Many objected to the "glorification of violence" (or something along those lines). I didn't. I wanted the truth- honesty. The manner of how many young dancers are trained is in the Eastern Bloc style, where hitting and yelling are par for the course. But the auther descibes this all in a rather dreamy style as if it's a pretentious novel rather than a non fictional account of her experience. So at the end I never came to understand why she felt so attached to her teacher, abusive or not. Nor did I come to understand the sexual chemistry that exsists between a dancer and his/her instructor (or choreographer). So I have to agree with one reviewer who wrote "What was the point of this book? "

Collusion was extremely well written and easy to read. It kept my interest from the first sentance to the last word.

However, the content was somewhat questionable. It was a wonderful and interesting showing of the life of a serious dancer, yet seemed SO obsessed with violence, sex and eroticism.

Interesting, but not really worth the time.

Evan Zimroth's touching and insightful memoir left this reader stunned and enlightened. It is one of the most honest personal revelations I have read, boldly honest and unwilling to cringe under or conform to what our sexually dysfunctional society says should be the "normal" response to what is told of in this book. Obviously, one should not read this book if one is afraid of hearing what a real girl thought about a very unusual and intimate relationship. It is not a story of prurient events; it is about the love this girl has for the discipline of ballet and for a dynamic and compelling man who initiated her into its world. Ms. Zimroth has unsparingly chronicled her growth of character during the two years of her tale, and tells a story that is at once tense, dramatic, frightening, exciting and uplifting. Her refusal to cast a sentimental pall over her childhood and these events certainly frightens those who cannot see the individual human being that is a child for all the treacle with which we sugar-coat the concept of childhood. This book is a template by which we can judge the ability of people to truly listen to other voices instead of running in fear from differing views. Despite the lip service paid to "inclusiveness" in liberal circles these days, some of the responses I have seen to this memoir indicate the degree to which that concept should include the label "but only to include that of which we approve." Finally, a note about hypocrisy. I couldn't help but think, while reading what is one of the most intense scenes in the book (when the young girl is punished by her mentor for smoking) that, was that punishment to be inflicted by a parent, most of us would not think twice. But from someone else? Horrors! Yet the dynamics of the event were no different than the countless physical punishments which parents inflict daily and unquestioningly (and, many times, rightly) on their own offspring. Children today exist only as slaves, owned by their parents and forced to obey the strictures of whatever -ism those around them feel they should be taught. We career from no discipline for children to subservience for them without ever thinking to teach them simple morals and ethics that respect them as individuals and take into account their need to grow through experience. (They certainly will not grow through coddling and protection from everything the world has to offer, only to thrust them out unready and frightened into harsh reality when they turn eighteen.) The horror some adults feel at the child who can think for and desire for herself is evident in the very parents who spend so much time praising children as pure, unsullied angels. Those of us who remember our childhoods well, as Ms. Zimroth does, know better. This book deserves huge success. Congratulations and thanks to Evan Zimroth for having the courage to tell us this remarkable story.