Song of Ascent: Stories

by Gabriella Goliger

Gabriella Goliger's finely honed and exacting prose evokes the troubled lives of Ernst and Hannah Birnbaum, displaced German Jews who flee Hitler but cannot escape the shadow of the Holocaust. Their uprooted existence takes them from Europe to the Holy Land and eventually to Montreal, where they attempt to create a shelter for their children, Rachel and Avi, despite a strained marriage and all that they have lost. This new generation struggles with the inherited alienation that accompanies exile, striving to both protect and escape their vulnerable elders. Adopting the voices of various members of the immediate and extended family, Goliger poignantly explores the tense dialogue between present and past.

177 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2001

Reviews

[Serafina Sands · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really short stories, and not really a novel. This is a series of interlocking vignettes in the lives of two holocaust survivors and their children. It left me wanting more depth, more detail, more trajectory. I found it unsatisfying because it was too incomplete.