Monday, September 28, 2015

The Debt of Tamar by Nicole Dweck

Review by Julie Joseph for the Jewish Book Council

A fantastical Jewish tale told by debut author Nicole Dweck, the Debt of Tamar travels beyond continents and outlives the sands of time. Beginning in sixteenth century Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, and Palestine, then jumping five centuries to Nazi-invaded Paris, then to the newly established State of Israel before landing in present-day Istanbul and New York City, the story manifests its own momentum. In each location, the reader encounters new characters that connect the insatiable love of five centuries to its twenty-first-century resolution.

Dweck’s fictional characters are inspired by the precarious status of the Jews in sixteenth century Europe, as conversos fled the Inquisition and found refuge on the shores of the Ottoman Empire. An innocent but forbidden love develops in Istanbul, where the lovers are torn apart by the father of the Jewish girl, Tamar. As a Portuguese refugee, he will not allow his daughter to abandon her faith and marry a Muslim, even though he may be the son of the Sultan. Her father witnessed what happened to Jews in Portugal when they worshipped openly: they were burned alive at the stake. Perhaps spurred by his painful memories of watching the auto de fe, he exiles Tamar to the Ottoman Protectorate of Palestine where she can be protected from abandoning her faith.

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Monday, September 21, 2015

Run You Down by Julia Dahl

By Zelda Shluker for Hadassah Magazine

In Julia Dahl’s first book, Invisible City, her central character, Rebekah Roberts, was a stringer, a rookie reporter trying to establish a foothold in a New York tabloid. After stubbornly, and intrepidly, solving a murder case, she now has enough credibility to catch a new assignment in the same ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn. As she continues to decipher the mores and sensibilities of the religious community–and figure out why Pessie Goldin, a lovely 22-year-old mother, was killed–she is also on a separate mission: To reconnect with Aviva, her once religious mother who had abandoned Rebekah after she was born to be raised by her non-Jewish father and his family in Florida.

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Monday, September 14, 2015

Panic in a Suitcase: A Novel by Yelena Akhtiorskaya

By Stewart Kampel for Hadassah Magazine

Readers often assume that a first novel is autobiographical. Especially in the case of Yelena Akhtiorskaya, Russian-born author of Panic in a Suitcase, since she shares roots in Odessa and Brighton Beach with her major characters. Akhtiorskaya, a 30-year-old who is a sly, no-holds-barred writer, explores the confounding life of émigrés from Russian-speaking Ukraine trying to build new lives in Brooklyn’s Little Odessa.

The book spans two periods. It begins in 1993 when Pasha Nasmertov, a well-known poet and the last family member in Odessa, leaves the motherland to go to Brooklyn to visit his mother, Esther, the 65-year-old family matriarch who is stricken with breast cancer. Fifteen years later, young Frida, the poet’s niece, on a short hiatus from medical school, flies to Odessa in search of herself, only to find a perplexing and vexing world.

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Monday, September 7, 2015

Safekeeping by Jessamyn Hope

Review by Edyt Dickstein for Jewish Book Council

Short story writer Jessamyn Hope’s powerful debut novel draws on her experiences living in Israel in its depiction of a secluded kibbutz community. The primary protagonist, Adam, is a former drug addict who steals a family heirloom to pay for his vices; when his grandfather discovers that the brooch his missing, he has a heart attack and dies. Plagued by guilt, Adam uses the only clue he has—a letter from his grandfather’s young lover that accompanied the heirloom—to locate the woman and give her the brooch, hoping that by doing so he will have in some way absolved himself. Adam traces his grandfather’s footsteps back to the kibbutz where the two had met, but is unable to locate his grandfather’s former lover. Frustrated by his failures, Adam is unable to stay sober and slowly unravels.

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