An emotionally intense tale enlivened by unique literary history.
Veprinski’s historical novel explores passionate love and angst within New York’s early-20th-century Yiddish literary community.
Miriam and David Eidelberg’s marriage is already languishing when Miriam, who is in her mid-20s and the mother of a 7-year-old daughter, is first introduced to Nyezhiner, the mononymic celebrity poet of the Yiddish literary circle known as “Di Yunge” (the Youth). She has read all of his poetry—and has even memorized some of it—and she is entranced by the handsome, enigmatic luminary. He is 33, married, and the father of five children, all of whom he left (but still supports) for the love of another woman…whom he has also left. Miriam and Nyezhiner meet at a gathering where a collection of poets, essayists, and novelists are exchanging ideas. Later, the two take a walk across the Williamsburg Bridge in a gentle interlude that signals the beginning of what will become a 30-year love affair. Although drawn to the moody poet, Miriam is cautious. Still a teenager when she married and had her daughter Dinaleh, she now needs to find her own path. Nyezhimer, on the other hand, quickly becomes obsessed with her. After a painful confrontation with her husband David (“he came closer, very close, then raised his hand and gave her face a hard slap”), Miriam moves in with her brother, sister-in-law, and mother. A distraught Nyezhimer searches for her, occasionally waiting through the night in the street outside her brother’s house. Veprinski’s dramatic autobiographical novel traces the first tumultuous year of the relationship between the author (Miriam in the novel) and the lyric poet Mani Leyb (Nyezhiner). Ellen Cassedy and Anita Norich have translated the melancholy narrative, first published in Yiddish in 1971; they have beautifully captured the rhythms, humor, and intimacy of the original text. The story is a detailed portrait of a time, place, and culture. Populated by a large cast of Yiddish writers of the day (all of the names have been changed), the novel engages readers with an intriguing variety of artistic personalities and temperaments.
An emotionally intense tale enlivened by unique literary history.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798990998094
Page Count: 195
Publisher: White Goat Press
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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