Every now and then, a multi-generational novel such as “The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem” by Sarit Yishai-Levi (Thomas Dunn Books/St. Martin’s Press) comes along, so rich with potent curses, outlandish customs, eccentric characters, and forbidden loves, readers might find the story somewhat incredible and hard to connect to.
For retired Israeli spy Mishka Ben-David, writing fiction was a realization of artistic aspirations he had long suppressed.
In Amy Bloom\’s novel \”Away,\” Lillian Leyb makes her way from the Lower East Side to Seattle and then Alaska, hoping to get to Siberia to find her daughter.
Somehow, this most blatant form of self-promotion, this venue that, until a couple of hours ago, had looked to me like a literary meat market, has suddenly reminded me of the reason I started writing in the first place: to tell a good story; a story about Jews; a story that in its own small way continues the tale of this people who have had to struggle, in every generation, to ensure that their story doesn\’t end.
Everything Is Illuminated,\” Jonathan Safran Foer\’s tragi-comic tale of a young American Jew\’s journey through Ukraine in search of his grandfather\’s roots, is the first winner of JBooks.com\’s People\’s Choice Award for the decade\’s best work of Jewish fiction at the Koret International Jewish Book Awards ceremony in San Francisco.
One should read Israeli writers, of course — Agnon, Amichai, A.B. Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld, Orly Castel-Bloom, Etgar Keret. But the more appropriate template may come from fellow Americans, writers who, by exploring the Diaspora Jew\’s relationship to Israel, have gone down this road before.
Narrated in the first person, present tense (always risky), \”Love With Noodles\” follows Gelder\’s canoodling with a string of women who enter his life just as he emerges from mourning his late beshert, Ellen. Gelder lives alone. His grown son, Eric, faces financial ruin. What\’s worse, Eric is planning to marry a non-Jew.
In late fall of 1999, I wrote a short story, \”Summertime,\” which I eventually included in my collection, \”Assumption and Other Stories\” (Bilingual Press, 2003). When the book reviews started coming in, most noted that particular story\’s unsettling premise.
If Jacob Green sounds like every teenager who\’s hated mandatory Shabbat dinners, he\’s also the protagonist of Joshua Braff\’s viciously witty and poignant new novel.
In this collection of linked stories, the three figures at the center are a mother, father and son who leave Riga, Latvia, for Toronto, Canada. The stories are told from the point of view of the son, Mark Berman, who observes everything and helps interpret the New World for his parents.
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