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| February
2005 |
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In
the Image by Dara Horn
Bill Landsmann, an elderly
Jewish refugee in a New Jersey suburb with a passion
for travel, is obsessed with building his slide collection
of images from the Bible that he finds scattered throughout
the world. The novel begins when he crosses paths with
his granddaughter's friend, Leora, and continues by
moving forward through her life and backward through
his, revealing unexpected links between his family's
past and her family's future. |
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Dara
Horn Recommends: |
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 Tevye
the Dairyman by Sholem Alaichem
A superb introduction to the
caustic wit and keen observations of one of the world's
greatest storytellers. Included are "Tevye the Dairyman,
" his masterpiece and the basis for Fiddler on the Roof,
and all 21 Railroad Stories, in which human nature and
the various shocks of modernity are perceived by men
and women riding the trains from shtetl to shtetl. |
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| March
2005 |
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An
Hour in Paradise by Joan Leegant
A former drug dealer turned
yeshiva student faces his past while visiting a dying
AIDS patient. A disaffected young American in the ancient
city of Safed ventures in Kabbalist mysticism and gets
more than he bargained for. Three sisters - one a Hindu,
one an Orthodox Jew, and one a struggling actress just
trying to get by - find unexpected happiness with the
help of an unseen, yet beloved, hand. Interspersed with
these are tales of love lost and found - between fathers
and sons, old childhood sweethearts past their prime,
and strangers thrown together by circumstance and chance. |
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Joan
Leegant Recommends: |
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 The
Complete Stories by Bernard Malamud
In all his work, Malamud was
concerned to identify and dramatize a quality he spoke
of as "the human." This quality is found in the way
his characters cling to hope against all reason, in
their capacity for sudden deep feeling and their awareness
of the world's comic indifference to their aspirations. |
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| April
2005 |
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The
English Disease by Joseph Skibell
Described as "a wildly funny
novel that is equal parts Philip Roth, Groucho Marx
and Woody Allen," this novel by award winning author
Skibell, engages us in the search for identity of
a neurotic and talented Mahler expert as he contemplates
divorce, parenthood and human compassion.
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Joseph
Skibell Recommends: |
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 Ragtime
by E.L. Doctorow
An extraordinary tapestry,
Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between
the turn of the century and the First World War. One
lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry
Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside
their house, and almost magically, the line between
fantasy and reality disappears. |
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| May
2005 |
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A
Palestine Affair by Jonathan Wilson
This swift and sensual novel
of passion and politics transports us to British Palestine,
where the Arabs, the British, and the Jews mingle in
a scene of colonial excess and unease. It is 1924, and
Mark Bloomberg, a disillusioned London painter, arrives
in Jerusalem to take up a propaganda commission. When
he and his American wife, Joyce, accidentally witness
the murder of a prominent Orthodox Jew near their cottage,
they become embroiled in an investigation that will
test their marriage and their characters.
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Jonathan
Wilson Recommends: |
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 The
Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley
With a sure and humorous touch,
Grace Paley explores the "little disturbances" that
lie behind our everyday lives. Whether writing about
sexy little girls, loving and bickering couples, angry
suburbanites, frustrated job seekers, or Jewish children
performing a Christmas play, she captures the loneliness,
poignancy, and humor of human experience with |
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