A thoughtful, provocative novel that artfully examines political obstacles to Jewish spirituality.
A fictional investigation of Jewish identity that tracks the parallel efforts of two men to live as Jews in an inhospitable world.
This is Avi-Hai’s (Danger: Three Jewish Peoples, 1997, etc.) first novel. His other books were nonfiction analyses of Jewish theological and political affairs. A Canadian-born journalist who immigrated to Israel in 1952 and an Israeli civil servant, his life seems to have revolved around the historically nettlesome question of Jewish identity. The novel itself is really two novellas, each meant to mirror and illuminate the other. Both follow characters named Avraham. Like the author, the first Avraham is a Canadian-born journalist who immigrated to Israel out of solidarity with the Zionist cause. From the very beginning, Avraham finds himself in peril. He has stumbled upon rampant corruption among the ultra-Orthodox rabbi extremists, the very same rabbis who “sanctioned” Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination after he signed the Oslo Accords. These rabbinical ideologues are entangled in an embezzlement scheme, and Avraham has gathered enough evidence to prove it. Under threat of death, he flees to Greece, pays for an ersatz passport and makes his way to Italy. On his way, he is entrusted with a very old manuscript of undetermined provenance in order to determine its value and negotiate its sale. The manuscript turns out to be the story of another Avraham, an Italian writing circa 1600. As the shared names suggest, both narrators experience morally comparable challenges, attempting to maintain their Jewishness in the face of relentless persecution. The Renaissance Avraham runs from the Inquisition. The prose sometimes slides into the melodramatic, but the story remains a philosophically serious engagement with a historically significant theme: the tension between Judaism and a modern world “infected with ideological viruses.”
A thoughtful, provocative novel that artfully examines political obstacles to Jewish spirituality.Pub Date: July 24, 2013
ISBN: 978-0989416900
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Appletree Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Weisberger writes with humor and authority, but her plot circles like a whirlpool—and by the time Andrea’s ready to face...
A junior assistantship to the editor of the world’s top fashion magazine (“The job a million girls would die for”) provides endless fodder for a one-note but on-the-money kiss-and-tell debut.
Andy, or, as her boss from hell calls her: “Ahn-dre-ah,” harbors dreams of writing for The New Yorker, but her luck runs out—or runs high, depending on your priorities—when her first job interview lands her at Runway magazine, beholden to Miranda Priestly, “solely responsible for anticipating her needs and accommodating them.” Intelligent, sarcastic and without a smidgen of interest in fashion, Andrea quickly learns the Runway culture, from the necessity of being tall, emaciated, slavish, and half-naked in winter to the perks of town cars, shopping bags filled with designer duds, and the promise of any job after one year of servitude. A few weeks of dealing with the insensitive, sadistic and imperious Miranda leave our heroine on the verge of abdicating, but before long she’s joining her colleagues in “the classic Runway Paranoid Turnaround . . . scrambling to negate whatever blasphemy is uttered” about the divine Miranda.” Outside of work, Andrea has a perfectly nice socially conscious boyfriend from her college days at Brown, a best-friend-slash-roommate with a drinking problem who’s getting her doctorate at Columbia, a loving family in Connecticut, and no time for any of them as she races to retrieve Miranda’s French bulldog puppy from the vet, hire a nanny for her children, make 12 trips in stiletto heels to Starbucks for her coffee in between sorting her dirty dry cleaning. It’s only a 14-hour day! Ultimately, of course, everything explodes, and in the end, of course, righteousness prevails.
Weisberger writes with humor and authority, but her plot circles like a whirlpool—and by the time Andrea’s ready to face some hard choices, it’s difficult to care. Her exhaustion is contagious. (N.B: Weisberger, this season’s buzz of the town, was an assistant to Vogue editrix Anna Wintour—read: Miranda Priestly—giving this putative roman-à-clef an added splash of juice.)Pub Date: April 22, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50926-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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