The Human Season

Library of Modern Jewish Literature

by Edward Lewis Wallant

In this powerfully affecting novel -- by the author of The Pawnbroker -- Joe Berman, an immigrant at eighteen, fifty-nine now, and a hard-working Connecticut plumber, faces the loss of his deeply loved wife. The months that follow, months of wrath and rebellion during which he fights his way to a new idea of life, death, and God, are part of Berman's human season. But so are the years behind him, vividly evoked as the narrative travels back into the past.

Genres: Fiction, Jewish, American, 20th Century

Paperback

Published March 1, 1973

About the author

Wallant began to write professionally at age twenty nine. He had served in the Second World War as a gunner's mate. He attended the University of Connecticut and graduated from Pratt Institute and studied writing at The New School in New York. While he worked as an advertising art director, Wallant wrote at night.

Wallant died of an aneurysm at the age of 36.

Reviews

[Graham P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humanist fiction at its finest. In a mere 190 pages, the brilliant Edward Lewis Wallant pens this bittersweet novel about the pervasive emotions of loss, faith, age, and loneliness. It's so refreshing to read a novel that may be seen as a 'lament' and not quite a story, and scenes that forego the hook and pitch - the drama - for the raw human emotion, and how it exists in solitude alone, and how it withers in solitude around family and friends. Simplicity and heartfelt, melodramatic without being purple and preachy. Damn, going through my own loneliness, this novel stung the nerves in an endearing, sad way.

Rather bummed to say I've already read 3 of the 4 novels Wallant wrote before his death in his mid-thirties. I'll savor his last one, slowly. With 'The Pawnbroker' and 'Tenants of Moonbloom', I'd say he's one of the most underrated American novelists.

[Dorothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This small novel should be on college reading lists; it is so suited to discussion and reflection. It deals with loss of old concepts of religion, but mostly it is a very moving story of a man as a child in 1907 Russia, then in 1957 New York. Apparently Edward Lewis Wallant didn't live to write many other novels, which is a sad loss. It is rare to read a novel that is subtly uplifting. I loved this little book. Plus it can be read in 2 days.

[Ava Jaunzems · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a character study of an elderly Jewish man, a plumber by trade, who has recently lost his wife and finds himself in the deepest mourning, a feeling the depth of which surprises even him. To his credit, he makes no effort to "deal with it." Instead, to the despair of both his business partner and his daughter, he allows it to runs its painful but natural course. The book is touching and in places comic, others tragic (at its own level). A "study" is how I began this review, and that is really all that it is, by which I mean it no disrespect, but merely to warn that the plot may be too subtle for readers looking for a story to keep the pages turning. One wishes the author had lived longer. He died in his 30s, I believe.