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From My Bookshelf: Zayde Comes to Live, by Sheri Sinykin

by Erika Dreifus on
2

The children’s book market isn’t an area I know especially well. But when Sheri Sinykin contacted me to see if I’d be interested in a review copy of her picture book, Zayde Comes to Live (illustrated by Kristina Swarner; Peachtree Publishers; release date October 1, 2012), I accepted. Gratefully.

The story introduces us to Rachel, a young Jewish girl whose grandfather (“Zayde”) has come to live with her family. “It’s because he is dying,” Rachel tells us. And Rachel is worried, because she doesn’t know where Zayde will go after he dies.

I’m many years older than the fictional Rachel, and I still don’t quite understand what Judaism teaches about where we go after we die. Like Rachel, however, I take comfort in the teachings shared in this book, particularly about Olam Ha-Ba, the World to Come.

The illustrations are lovely, and the words simple. Everything combines to convey the difficulty–and necessity–of saying good-bye.

I’ve seen a review on Goodreads in which another reader remarked that Zayde Comes to Live brought tears to her eyes. It brought tears to mine, too.

Wednesday’s Work-in-Progress: Thoughts About Linked Short-Story Collections

by Erika Dreifus on
5

If you follow me on Goodreads, you know that a few days ago I finished reading Shani Boianjiu’s soon-to-be published debut novel, The People of Forever Are Not Afraid. And if you’re a member of the Jewish Book Carnival group on the Goodreads site, you may also know that one of the lingering questions I’m considering is whether anyone considered publishing this book as a collection of linked stories rather than a novel (and also, perhaps, omitting the final section, composed of two chapters which in my view are the weakest pieces in the book–but taking that discussion any further will send us on a tangent from which we are unlikely to return).

I wanted to love Boianjiu’s book without reservation. I’d been anticipating it since Boianjiu–recommended by Nicole Krauss–was named one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” for 2011. I was delighted to find an excerpt included in the Publishers Lunch “BEA Buzz Books” compilation, and I quickly obtained an electronic galley (thank you, NetGalley!). Then, The New Yorker published another excerpt. And I was hooked.

And there’s so much in this book that I do admire, especially considering a) the author’s youth–it seems that she is the youngest person ever to be honored among the “5 Under 35”, and b) the fact that English is not her native language. Not to mention the complicated political issues embedded in the work and its in-the-middle-of-things perspectives on life in Israel, matters of ongoing interest to this practicing writer-who-reads.

But I hadn’t progressed all that far in the book when I realized that I was going to have trouble accepting The People of Forever Are Not Afraid as a novel. Perhaps because, as a fiction writer, I’m somewhat obsessed with these distinctions? Perhaps because recent work on one of my own stories-in-progress, which I’ve realized could easily be linked with another four or five I’ve published over the years (but not yet in book form), has given me a case of linked-stories-on-the-brain?

In the meantime, Junot Diaz has gone ahead and fueled my cerebral struggles with a Q&A for The New Yorker. A new Diaz story appears in the magazine this week (sorry–it’s paywall-protected). And in discussing this story, which appears in his forthcoming collection, This Is How You Lose Her, Diaz says: (more…)

From My Bookshelf: THE INNOCENTS, by Francesca Segal

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Just a couple of days ago I mentioned that I’ve been reading The Innocents, the debut novel by Francesca Segal. As I noted, Segal’s book updates Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and transplants it to a tight-knit Jewish community in contemporary London.

I picked up a complimentary pre-publication copy (and had it signed by the author) at last month’s Book Expo America here in New York City. I also had the good fortune to catch one of Segal’s tweets about a reading she was giving at a bookstore in my neighborhood that same week, so I had the chance to hear the book’s opening section read aloud with a suitably British accent.

But it took a few weeks until I managed to start reading the book myself. Once I began, it was tough to put the book down. I’m not at all certain that all other readers will be as captivated by both elements of the book–the adaptation of the Wharton tale and the depiction of a Jewish community and its customs–as I was. But they sure captivated me.

I’ll leave you with a sampling of brief excerpts–passages that I found so resonant that they inspired me to dog-ear their respective pages and return to think consider them more intensively. (more…)

From My Bookshelf: Fiction by Etgar Keret

by Erika Dreifus on
5

Confession: I frequently read, admire, and link to Israeli author Etgar Keret’s nonfiction/essays (particularly his columns for Tablet), but I haven’t always been as comfortable with Keret’s fiction. I read The Nimrod Flipout when its U.S. publisher sent me a review copy of the English translation several years back (2006), and although I understood what the fuss was about–Keret is one prodigiously talented, not to mention prolific writer–my own reading tastes just don’t hunger for the sheer strangeness–call it experimentalism, fabulism, magical realism, whatever–that seemed to characterize the collection.

Moreover, back then–around the time of the Second Lebanon War–my nascent interest in attempting to understand contemporary Israel through its literature was intensifying. There was so much about Israel that I, a Diaspora Jew, needed to learn (this remains all too true six years later). Keret’s fables and flash fictions didn’t seem to engage with the seriousness of what the Israelis call hamatzav— “the situation,” namely, the pervasive conflict that suffuses life in their country. It occurred to me only hazily (if at all) that this was a selfish indulgence of my Diaspora self; living within “the situation,” Keret could certainly be excused from spending still more time with it in his fiction.

But last week, a review-essay on The Millions caught my eye. Titled “The Maturation of Etgar Keret” and written by Bezalel Stern, it captivated me. And it sent me hurrying to add two new volumes to my bookshelf: Suddenly, A Knock on the Door (Keret’s latest book to be released in English, with translations by Nathan Englander, Miriam Shlesinger, and Sondra Silverston) and Four Stories, a slim collection I’ll address in greater detail shortly. (more…)

Recent Reads: The Liberal Case for Israel, by Jonathan Miller

by Erika Dreifus on
2

Disclosure: I’ve been impressed by Jonathan Miller‘s intelligence and leadership for 25 years, since the long-ago Shabbat when, as a pre-freshman, I visited Harvard Hillel for the first time and met him at the Reform minyan service. At the time, Jonathan was a sophomore, but, with the NFTY presidency behind him, he was already chairing the full Hillel community–while also gearing up to run the national “Students for Gore” effort. I’ve expected great things from him ever since, and his new e-book, The Liberal Case for Israel: Debunking Eight Crazy Lies About the Jewish State, meets (if not exceeds) those high expectations.

Moreover, the text provides a clear and documented guide for those of us who want to join in this effort, those of us who are so frequently frustrated and infuriated by those “crazy lies” about Israel that we see so often in the media (and, for those of us in literary and/or academic communities, among our colleagues). You can review all eight of the “crazy lies” if you take up Amazon‘s “Look Inside” offer. For now, I’ll simply cite the first two: “Imperialist” and “Apartheid.” (You can also read about another one, “Pinkwashing,” in an excerpt from the book that appeared on The Huffington Post this week.)

Time prevents me from writing an in-depth review of Jonathan’s e-book, and I hope I’ll be forgiven for not giving The Liberal Case for Israel the detail it deserves. But I’m so eager to let others know about it. I’ve made no secret of my own wish to be able to do pretty much precisely what Jonathan has done here. I am most grateful–though, given what I recall about him, utterly unsurprised–that Jonathan got there first.