David Cooper's Blog - Posts Tagged "fiction"
Jewish books: The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. by Gina Nahai
“. . . the novel’s epic sweep, engaging prose, suspenseful plot, sense of humor, and introduction to a fascinating subculture outweigh its flaws.” - from my New York Journal of Books review. For additional remarks also see my examiner article.
Israeli books: Gail Hareven's Lies, First Person is a visceral novel of ideas
"There are books that make us feel intensely and others that make us think deeply; one that does both is Gail Hareven’s opalescent and psychologically complex eleventh novel Lies, First Person (in the original Hebrew Hashkarim Ha’aharonim Shel Hagoof which literally translates as The Body’s Last Lies), which is only the second (The Confessions of Noa Weber) of her 13 books for adults to be published in English in Dalya Bilu’s fine translation." - From my New York Journal of Booksreview
" Lies, First Person , Gail Hareven ’s second novel to be translated into English (the eleventh of her thirteen adult books published in Hebrew), which is published today by Open Letter Books , is both an emotionally compelling narrative and a novel of ideas. Its characters find different ways of coping with the emotional aftermath of an unreported and unpunished crime, and the novel invites its readers to consider such questions as the nature of evil and the justification of vengeance and retribution." - From my examiner.com article
Israeli books: Five Selves explores five inner lives
“...recommended to readers who enjoy interior prose and psychological literary fiction.” -- from my review of Five Selves by Emanuela Barasch Rubinstein in New York Journal of Books . My additional remarks and excerpts from the book appear in examiner.com . Five Selves
Jewish books: The Empire of the Senses probes Jewish identity in Weimar Germany
"Alexis Landau’s cinematically descriptive, character-driven debut novel explores ethnic identity via an intermarried family in WWI and Weimar era Germany, i.e. before anti-Semitism became official state policy legally codifying ethnic definitions." -- from my New York Journal of Books review in which I praise the book as “handsomely written” as well as a “powerful and compelling novel.” My additional remarks and excerpts from the book appear in examiner.com.
Portrait of a Man Known as Il Condottiere by Georges Perec
What does fiction about art forgery have to do with Jewish identity?
In my New York Journal of Books review I praise Perec’s first novel as “a fully realized and mature work of fiction.” For a fuller discussion of Portrait of a Man Known as Il Condottiere read my New York Journal of Books review
Portrait of a Man (The Condottiero) by Antonello da Messina (1475,Venice, Italy), Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
Nell Zink's smart and witty 2nd novel Mislaid
"Looking for a brainy yet breezy novel that addresses gender, race, and class issues with levity and has a happy ending? Try Nell Zink’s Mislaid , her second published novel following her critically well-received debut The Wallcreeper in 2014." -- from my New York Journal of Books book review: Mislaid: A Novel by Nell Zink
"To sum up, Mislaid is an entertaining book worth reading on a plane or train ride to a vacation destination or on a poolside chaise lounge when you get there." -- from my examiner article, Books: Nell Zink's 2nd novel Mislaid is smart and witty
Jewish books: Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers is a high tech epic
What happens when a down on his luck luddite novelist is hired to ghostwrite a memoir by a math whiz tech mogul who shares his (and the author of this novel’s) name? …At close to 600 pages of dense prose Book of Numbers is not light reading. I close my NYJB review by recommending it to “readers as ambitious as it is.” — from Jewish books: Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers is a high tech epic Also see my New York Journal of Books review. Overall, a challenging but fun and rewarding read!
Ronit Matalon's autobiographic novel The Sound of Our Steps
"A fictional and more literary tale of an Egyptian Jewish family’s diminished circumstances after immigrating to Israel is
The Sound of Our Steps
by
Ronit Matalon
, a novel published today in
Dalya Bilu
’s English translation by Metropolitan Books. In
my New York Journal of Books review
I praise it as a 'beautifully written and skillfully translated book that rewards rereading.'” -- from
my examiner article, Israeli Books: Ronit Matalon's autobiographic novel The Sound of Our Steps
Jewish books: Fishman and Tsabari explore home and displacement in new fiction
In my examiner article I write:
"Two fiction books published this month explore what home means for two distinct waves of recent immigrants. Boris Fishman continues to relate the experiences of Russian speaking Jews who immigrated to America in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s in his second novel Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo, and Canadian-Israeli writer Ayelet Tsabari explores the lives of young Israelis at home and abroad in her debut book of short stories The Best Place on Earth: Stories, which won the Jewish Book Council’s $100, 000 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature in 2015 for the 2013 Canadian edition."
Also see my New York Journal of Books reviews of the two books:
http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-...
http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/bo…/b...
Books: Charles Bock and Jennifer S. Brown portray Manhattan in earlier eras
"At first glance two historical novels published last week have little in common. Where Charles Bock’s second novel Alice and Oliver is a starkly realistic and unflinching portrait of a marriage undergoing trial by health crisis in 1990s New York, Jennifer S. Brown’s debut novel Modern Girls , on the other hand, is a warm, heimisheh tale of two generations of women in a Jewish immigrant family on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1930s whose opportunities and choices were limited by their gender." -- from my examiner article. Also see my reviews of the two books in New York Journal of Books .
