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Thursday’s Post-Publication Post: Introducing Jane Roper & EDEN LAKE

by Erika Dreifus on
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I know. By now, you may be accustomed to Thursday posts about my story collection, Quiet Americans. But today is special for Last Light Studio, the collaborative micropress that published my book in January. And that’s because today is Pub Day for the next LLS book: Jane Roper‘s novel, Eden Lake.

I was lucky enough to read Eden Lake in manuscript, and I snagged a signed copy of the finished book a bit early when I was in Boston just about two weeks ago. I recommend it to you especially as we approach summer and you start thinking about your summer reading list. It’s a lively, engaging story that takes place at a summer camp in Maine, and it’s bound to bring back some of your own summer-camp memories. It’s also a story about a family.

Here’s a more “official” description:

In 1968, newlyweds Clay Perry and Carol Weiss founded Eden Lake, a utopian children’s summer camp. Thirty years later, their marriage is long over and the camp has become a pricey playground for entitled suburbanites. When tragedy strikes, the Perryweiss children have to decide what role Eden Lake—and all that it stands for—will play in their lives.

Abe, the eldest and heir apparent, has never been able to commit to a career—or a woman. Jude, entangled with a married man, must confront her turbulent relationship with her past. Eric, the youngest, who has never strayed far from Eden Lake, stands at the precipice of a new life. Idealism and infidelity, childhood memories and the hard truths of adulthood collide and coalesce in the summer of 1998 at Camp Eden Lake.

Sounds juicy, doesn’t it?

It has been a pleasure to follow along as part of Team LLS in these months leading up to Eden Lake‘s debut. One of the pre-pub elements I’ve most admired is the Camp Eden Lake website. It does such an excellent job building on the book’s premise, characters, setting, etc., that you may want to sign your kids up for a summer there right away (or enroll yourself)!

Congratulations to Jane on her novel’s pub day. I know that Eden Lake is going to be a big success! And here’s the icing on the cake: If you become a Jane Roper fan now, you won’t have long to wait for the author’s second book. Her memoir “about the ups and downs of her first three years as a mother of twins” will be published by St. Martin’s Press next year!

Words of the Week: David Grossman (trans. Jessica Cohen)

by Erika Dreifus on
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I won’t lie to you. Reading David Grossman’s To the End of the Land wasn’t easy. It’s a long, difficult read. But there are 2 1/2 pages that I found so searing, so extraordinary, that they would have been enough to justify the entire book/purchase (or, as we say, dayenu).

Here’s a snippet:

What do you tell a six-year-old boy, a pip-squeak Ofer, who one morning, while you’re taking him to school, holds you close on the bike and asks in a cautious voice, “Mommy, who’s against us?” And you try to find out exactly what he means, and he answers impatiently, “Who hates us in the world? Which countries are against us?” And of course you want to keep his world innocent and free of hatred, and you tell him that those who are against us don’t always hate us, and that we just have a long argument with some of the countries around us about all sorts of things, just like children in school sometimes have arguments and even fights. But his little hands tighten around your stomach, and he demands the names of the countries that are against us, and there is an urgency in his voice and in his sharp chin that digs into your back, and so you start to name them: “Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon. But not Egypt–we have peace with them!” you say cheerfully. “We had lots of wars with them, but now we’ve made up.”….”Is Egypt really our friend?” “Not really,” you admit, “they still don’t completely want to be our our friends.” “So they’re against us,” he solemnly decrees, and immediately asks if there are other “countries of Arabs,” and he doesn’t let let up until you name them all: “Saudi Arabia, Libya, Sudan, Kuwait, and Yemen.” You can feel his mouth learning the names behind your back, and you add Iran–not exactly Arabs, but not exactly our friends, either. After a pause he asks softly if there are any more, and you mumble, “Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria,” and then you remember Indonesia and Malaysia, Pakistan and Afghanistan–none of those stans sounds so great to you–and here we are at school, sweetie! When you help him get off the bike seat, he feels heavier than usual.

And this: (more…)

Jewish Literary Links: Shavua Tov Edition

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Normally, I post my link compilations on Friday morning, before Shabbat. But this week, I made so many worthy discoveries after I prepared the Friday post that I am compelled to present a second batch. Let’s consider it the “Shavua Tov” edition!

  • First, as mentioned here yesterday, The Forward has announced a poetry contest commemorating the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.
  • Also from The Forward (via the Arty Semite blog): three poems by Alicia Ostriker.
  • And The Forward‘s Arty Semite blog has also given us this gem: an update on author Imre Kertész. NB: Benjamin Ivry’s post is in English, but if you understand Hungarian or French, you’ll also be able to appreciate the video.
  • One reason I found the Kertész post so striking is that I’ve recently finished reading Ruth Franklin’s sharp new book, A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction, which features a chapter devoted to the Hungarian Nobel literature laureate. Franklin will be interviewed by James Young at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City on Wednesday, January 12. Details about the event can be found online.
  • Big thanks to the Jewish Women’s Archive for compiling the #JWA100, a list of more than 100 Jewish women who tweet.
  • Finally, on Twitter and elsewhere, many of us are sending healing thoughts to Debbie Friedman, the acclaimed Jewish songwriter who has been hospitalized in serious condition. See the URJ homepage for more information. And, returning to The Forward, you can read about efforts and prayers in her honor.

    • The Wednesday Web Browser

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled
  • This week, I’m reading Andrew Furman’s new memoir, My Los Angeles in Black and (Almost) White. It’s a very absorbing read—and I’d say that even if Andy weren’t a friend! Over on her Reading for Writers blog, A. P. Bucak, who has already finished the book, seems to feel the same way.
  • Stacy Schiff shares advice for aspiring biographers.
  • You still have three days to buy Christmas presents, and Writer Abroad has some gift suggestions for the international writers on your lists.
  • My latest book review tackles some questions about how anthologies are compiled.
  • The ever-reliable After Deadline blog presents a new batch of “notes from the newsroom on grammar, usage and style.”

    • Recommended Reading: Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English, by Natasha Solomons

    by Erika Dreifus on
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    MR. ROSENBLUM DREAMS IN ENGLISH
    Natasha Solomons
    Reagan Arthur Books, 2010. 368 pp. $23.99
    ISBN: 978-0-316-07758-3
    Review by Erika Dreifus

    By now, we are familiar with literature penned by “2G”-ers, children of the second generation, whose Jewish parents survived Nazi persecution. With time’s passage, it was inevitable that we’d begin to see writings from the next generation: the grandchildren.

    British writer Natasha Solomons is one such grandchild. The “About the Author” section at this debut novel’s end reveals that Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English is based “on her own grandparents’ experience.” The novel focuses on Jack (né Jakob) Rosenblum, who emigrates from Germany with his wife, Sadie, and their baby daughter in the summer of 1937. Upon arrival, Jack receives a “dusky blue pamphlet entitled While you are in England: Helpful Information and Friendly Guidance for every Refugee.” If Jack cherishes a Bible, this pamphlet is it: “He obeyed the list with more fervour than the most ardent Bar Mitzvah boy did the laws of Kashrut….” Over time, he expands and adds to the list based on his own observations.

    Sadie Rosenblum does not share her husband’s enthusiasm for throwing off their past (or for his “verdammt list”). She is haunted by the family left behind—and lost—in Germany. This domestic conflict underlies the novel. But the challenge that actively propels the plot is Jack’s quest to build a golf course in Dorset, which results from his being denied golf-club membership—the final list item, “the quintessential characteristic of the true English gentleman.”

    This is a gorgeous book, with setting, scenes, and dialogue all artfully managed (an aside: the cover art is equally lovely, although I can’t help wishing that this American edition had preserved the British title, Mr. Rosenblum’s List: Or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman). It is no surprise to discover that Solomons is a screenwriter. Let us hope that she will soon script this story for film.

    (This review was published in Jewish Book World, Winter 5771/2010.)