Jewish grandmother revisits her youth in 'Künstlers in Paradise'

Time is a funny thing. The year 2020 — those months of confinement, fear, frustration and isolation — feels as if it happened ages ago and simultaneously as though we lived through it just last week.

Mamie Künstler, one of the protagonists in Cathleen Schine’s delightful new novel, “Künstlers in Paradise,” understands this phenomenon all too well. She should: She’s 93. “Time comes and goes too easily,” she tells her aimless grandson Julian, who has left his mess of a life in New York to visit her in California. “If you don’t pay attention, ninety years have passed by and left you behind.”