NEXT STOP

After the state of Israel disappears into a black hole, antisemitism becomes the law of the land.

As Resnick’s disturbing debut opens, Ethan and Ella—a tech journalist and a photographer—bond over the joy of launching a paper airplane from the rooftop deck of their co-working space. That might sound like a meet-cute, but this dark dystopian drama is no romantic comedy. The connection between the two characters, both Jewish, she the single mother of a 6-year-old named Michael, is forged in a climate of worldwide dread, in a city filled with random violence and robotic killer dogs. Ella lives in a part of the city called the Pale, which will soon become the only neighborhood in which Jews can live; this is one of myriad allusions to the years leading up to the Holocaust in Europe. After the First Event (the disappearance of Israel) and the Second Event (numerous similar “anomalies” tear the fabric of reality in cities around the world), many people believe that Jews are in on this situation or benefiting from it in some way; this unleashes further individual and state-sponsored acts of antisemitism. Meanwhile, it’s true that the anomalies are portals that exert a gravitational force only on Jews, who can step through to be transported to a mysterious parallel world. The portrayal of Jews in the book will not be comfortable for all readers. For example, the characters seem to agree that you can always identify a Jewish person just by looking at them; if this point is being held up to scrutiny rather than asserted as fact, that is not clear. The implications of the title, too, are discomfiting. Is Resnick, a rabbi in Pelham, New York, suggesting that this type of deep division between the Jews and everyone else is the “next stop”? Of what?

This creepy tale must be making a point about antisemitism, but the SF elements complicate it beyond clear translation.