Paper is White

by Hilary Zaid

When oral historian Ellen Margolis and her girlfriend decide to get married, Ellen realizes that she can't go through with a wedding until she tells her grandmother. There's only one problem: her grandmother is dead.

As the two young women beat their own early path toward marriage equality, Ellen's longing to plumb that voluminous silence draws her into a clandestine entanglement with a wily Holocaust survivor—a woman with more to hide than tell—and a secret search for buried history. If there is to be a wedding Ellen must decide: How much do you need to share to be true to the one you love?

Set in ebullient, 1990s Dot-com era San Francisco, Paper is White is a novel about the gravitational pull of the past and the words we must find to make ourselves whole.

Hilary Zaid is an alumna of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and the Tin House Writer's Workshop. Her short story "For Non-Speakers of the Mother Tongue" (Tahoma Literary Review, Winter 2017) has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and "The Dark Between the Stars" won the 2014 BLOOM Fiction Chapbook Prize. Hilary works as a freelance editor in Oakland, California.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Jewish, Lesbian, Romance, Contemporary

318 pages, Paperback

First published February 19, 2018

About the author

Hilary Zaid is the author of two novels, Paper is White (Bywater, 2018) and Forget I Told You This (Zero Street Fiction, 2023).

Hilary's short pieces have appeared in print and online venues including Mother Jones, Ecotone, Lilith Magazine, The Southwest Review, The Utne Reader, CALYX, The Santa Monica Review, and The Tahoma Literary Review.

Hilary is an alumna of the 2017 Sewanee Writers' Conference (Tennessee Williams Scholar), the Community of Writers and the Tin House Writers' Workshop. Hilary lives in the Bay Area with spouse, children and dogs.

Reviews

[Mya Matteo · Rating 4 out of 5]

a sweet, moving story about love, loss, and the meaning of history.

[hubsie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was interesting content wise, and I'd rate it at a 3.5. I actually really enjoyed that it was set in 1997, which I can vividly recall my own past. The book had moments of heartache and frustration at what the two MCs have to deal with in planning a lesbian wedding before it was legal, both from their own families and the public. Mixed with this was the story of an elderly Jewish woman, Anya, whom Ellen feels a connection with and is trying to learn her story from the war. And wow, can Ms. Zaid write! Beautiful and eloquent, I look forward to checking out more of her work.

However some parts of the story really dragged on and I found myself either skimming or putting the book down to focus on something else. I was intrigued with all of the historical nods and Anya's character, and found myself wanting more of that rather than the many run-on details of descriptions of Jewish culture. While that is important of course, it could have been tightened up, as I felt I was being hit over the head with it. A few times I would read parts out to my spouse (who is Jewish) and she was like "woah, that's a lot even for me... what in the world are you reading? Shouldn't I be teaching you this?" :). I also really did not like or connect with Fiona's character, who was Ellen's best friend, who came off as selfish and narcissistic, and I still can't really place why she was included. I wasn't very satisfied with the ending unfortunately.

Those few things aside, I would recommend this book because it is important, at least for myself as a gay lady who is incredibly grateful for all the strides people before me went through to make it easier, day by day, to have equal rights in marriage. There were some eye-opening "teaching moments" for sure. It is a humbling read.

[Erika Dreifus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd been looking forward to reading this book for months, and I wasn't at all disappointed when I finally got to spend time with the copy I purchased at a reading the author recently gave in New York. This is a debut novel embedded in recent history: 1990s dot-com-era San Francisco. It features a protagonist whose professional life is devoted to recording the testimony of Holocaust survivors and whose personal life includes, with her girlfriend, an early path toward marriage equality. Resonant even (perhaps especially?) now, 20 years past the events depicted within.

[Hilary Zaid · Rating 5 out of 5]

2019 GOLD MEDAL WINNER-- Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), LGBT+ Fiction
2018 FOREWORD INDIES BOOK OF THE YEAR SILVER MEDAL WINNER (Foreword Reviews)
LONG LIST FOR FICTION--Northern California Independent Bookseller's Association (NCIBA)
"50 Must-Read LGBTQ Fiction Books"--BookRiot
"50 of the Best LGBTQ Books of 2018"-- Autostraddle
"9 Best LGBT Novels to Look Out for in 2018" --UK Independent
"Your Summer Reading List: New Books from Bay Area Authors" --East Bay Express
"11 LGBTQ Books to Read During Pride Month"--Off the Shelf
"Your Ultimate Gay Girl Reading List"--After Ellen
"These 10 New LGBTQ+ Books Are the Perfect Way to Celebrate Pride Month"--PopSugar
"Page-Turners for Beach or Pool"--Washington Blade
"A Year of Good Reading"--UK Jewish Chronicle
"Must-Read February New Releases"-- BookRiot
"Your Favorite LGBTQI+ Novels" -- Reddit

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘I had never fit in a dress my mother imagined for me.’

California author Hilary Zaid earned her PhD in English form the University of California, Berkeley and publishes her debut novel PAPER IS WHITE having published a short story MY TRIPLE X VALANTINE’S AT THE FAR PONT SENIOR VILLAS previously: with this new book she is most assuredly making an impressive entry into the literary scene – and especially the LGBTQ genre. She is a 2017 Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference and an alumna of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and the Tin House Writers' Workshop. Her short stories have appeared in Lilith Magazine, The Southwest Review, The Utne Reader, CALYX, The Santa Monica Review, and The Tahoma Literary Review: her stories have been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Hilary works as a freelance editor in Oakland, California.

Hilary opens this riveting story with a haunting paragraph – ‘On the night my best and oldest friend sped three thousand miles west to hear the news of my engagement, it struck me finally with the force of revelation that I couldn’t get married without telling my grandmother first. My parents had loved me in their own distracted way. But my grandmother, a widow, had cherished me. That night, as Fiona’s jet dipped into the thick, blurred batting over San Francisco Bay, I lied to my fiancée about where I was going and crept into the shadowed living room of the house we shared to dial my grandmother’s number. She had been dead for five years.’

This is the quality of suspenseful writing that fills the pages of this sensitive story about coming to grips with the past and building a future. The synopsis Hilary provide is excellent – ‘When oral historian and assistant curator at the Foundation for the Preservation of Memory in San Francisco Ellen Margolis and her girlfriend Francine decide to get married, Ellen realizes that she can’t go through with a wedding until she tells her grandmother. There’s only one problem: her grandmother is dead. As the two young women beat their own early path toward marriage equality, Ellen’s longing to plumb that voluminous silence draws her into a clandestine entanglement with a wily Holocaust survivor—a woman with more to hide than tell—and a secret search for buried history. If there is to be a wedding Ellen must decide: How much do you need to share to be true to the one you love? Set in ebullient, 1990s Dot-com era San Francisco, Paper is White is a novel about the gravitational pull of the past and the words we must find to make ourselves whole.’

Warm, touching, and sensitive this is a book especially for our times.

[Miri · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's such a gorgeous book about lesbian love and jewish identity and the importance of storytelling. i enjoyed this a lot as somebody who has always been interested in history & hopefully i'll find more books like this

[Dannica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just reread this book! I've been doing very little rereading lately but I bought a physical copy of this and always intended to go back to it someday. And now, five years later, I have!

I've read a lot more lesbian literary fiction since I first read this book, so it no longer strikes me as quite as unique as it did the first time around. But I still love the slow, contemplative way this book pieces itself out, days and months slowly passing as Ellen and Francine work their way towards their wedding. And I had honestly forgotten many of the dramatic moments along the way.

I love how each character feels like their own person, not just an accessory to Ellen and Francine's story. Fiona and her personal dramas, Betty and Sol and their complicated relationship with its own unseen dimensions, Anya Kamenets who Ellen is somewhat projecting onto but who has her own story which is not really what Ellen imagines, Debbie who's willing to be flexible on her views about gay marriage... everyone is a person with their own "compartments", and all of them are capable of change, both good and disastrous.

A very good book, which I am putting back on my shelf to reread in another five years ;)

Original review:
This is just a really good book?
I'm pretty sure it's not meant to be a page turner but I could not put it down. I read it on Sunday but am only reviewing it now bc I had no internet this weekend. (Which was another reason I managed to read it in one day, but anyways.)

I don't have any complicated analysis here, this is just the best book I've read in a long time. I love all the complicated relationship dynamics. I love Francince and Ellen's domestic coupledom, and the complications that ensue when they decide they want to get married, and all their friends' and relations' reactions. It's really bittersweet at parts, but overall it still makes you feel good. And it feels sometimes like a story told in whispers, just very... fragile? yet somehow firm and solid? idk, I'll give up describing it. It was very good.

I got a free e-copy of this book in a giveaway (that large Christmas lesfic giveaway I can't remember the name of) but now I really want a physical copy. Hmmm.

[Lee Romer Kaplan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Paper Is White, Hilary Zaid has written a lyrical, compelling book that is both familiar and quietly surprising. The lovers at the heart of this story are two Jewish women in the 1990s dot.com San Francisco Bay Area, long before marriage equality exists. Despite doubts, upended friendships, the quiet unraveling or stasis in the two women's families of origin, the lovers want to be married, in a traditional and cultural sense, if not legally.

That Zaid weaves into her story a second thread of teenage lovers parted during the Holocaust elevates the story beyond just a particular historical moment or the trope of lovers who wish to marry despite obstacles to their union. Although the second thread was at first a bit harder to follow, I found myself deeply intrigued by Anya, just like Zaid’s protagonist, Ellen, and empathizing with Ellen’s grief and longing for her grandmother.

I enjoyed this book very much once I found my footing--a few too many minor characters to track at the outset--but what drew me in was what the book made me feel: deeply invested in Ellen and her story, and rooting for her and her beloved. By the end (which I won't give away here), I was in tears, happy tears mixed with a little sadness; I wasn’t ready to let go of characters I’d come to love.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book. It’s a multi-layered story of a 20-something woman living in the Bay Area in the 90s, preparing to marry her girlfriend while grappling with her Jewish identity, history, and her relationship with her family. I’m a Jewish lesbian in my 20s from San Francisco, so needless to say I found it very relatable!

I bought this ages ago and put off reading it because I thought it would be super heavy, as the main character works at a Holocaust oral history non-profit and it’s a lot about what late 20th century Jews owe survivors. But it ended up being super interesting and not as heavy as I was expecting, although it was heartbreaking at times and I did cry. As a cultural Jew with minimal religious education, I learned a lot and really connected to the intense conflicting feelings of the protagonist. And the current-day wedding storyline added some much-needed levity and romance (even as it had its own drama).

The writing can be intense and sort of over-the-top, which mostly felt very earned (you basically can’t be *too* evocative when telling a Holocaust survivor’s story), but there were times when I was iffy on it. Especially the descriptions of the one Asian character (she’s half-Chinese half-Indonesian, and she’s described as having “hair the color of lava rock and fierce, dark eyes the burning black of a Javanese god of love or war” and showing up “smooth and prescient as a Jakarta dukun summoning a pain-relieving charm”) were just like....what?? I think the point was the narrator was having doubts about committing for life to her fiancé and was putting all this weird sexualized description onto a hot coworker as a distraction? But it felt exoticized/fetishized and awkward.

Aside from that one page, and not fully connecting with the protagonist’s relationship with her grandmother, I really enjoyed reading this, and found it engrossing, moving, interesting, and relatable.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautiful novel is heartfelt, tender, angry, at times funny, and always brave. The months leading up to the late-90s wedding of Ellen and Francine feel so real—readers will be swept along by this love story and its attendant delight and complication. Ellen is an oral historian, interviewing Holocaust survivors in their last years; Francine teaches preschool. Both navigate troubled families, painful memories, shifting friendships, and the realities of romantic commitment. Their joy is not without sadness, and in their sadnesses are memories of joy. "The world is fundamentally a place of loss," Ellen thinks at one point, "and our ghosts are everywhere, taunting us to dare to try to make even one thing last." In the end, what in our lives will last but love? Author Hilary Zaid's poetic heart is radiant on every page.

[Ann G. Daniels · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary novel, writing so beautiful you want to read it out loud to anyone lucky enough to be sitting nearby. It's that rare gem: if you are part of any of the communities described in the book you will love the exquisite portrayals, but if you're not you'll be swept away anyway. In other words: This is a novel ABOUT a Jewish lesbian couple in the SF Bay Area, and it's a novel FOR anyone at all who loves terrific writing and a terrific story.

[Rahnuma Khan · Rating 1 out of 5]

279 page nearly done... I gave up, I have one word for this one "boring" 😌

[Rebecca Gomez Farrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's so much to unpack in this layered, beautifully written story that takes place in 1990s Berkeley. Whispers of a ghost story intrigue, and then the author lolls the reader into believing all is well with the ghosts of the past until it isn't. The main character pursues her passions and obsessions with preserving the narratives of holocaust survivors while navigating her own upcoming nuptials in a time in which those nuptials aren't legal but the meaning behind them take on all the more significance because of that. The character relationships are complex, yet easy to love, and the unsaids take on more and more meaning in narrative and metaphor as the book proceeds until saying something becomes the point of it all.

Ultimately, what most pleased me about the book was simple being invited as a guest to this wedding and getting to share in joy and hope for a future that prodding the past can solidfy.

[YZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a finely-crafted novel, at its heart a celebration of language and human communication that knows full well the limitations of said communication. It follows Ellen as she navigates both getting married to her girlfriend before gay marriage is legal, and also recording the testimonies of Holocaust survivors before time runs out on them -- two very different kinds of "before," both requiring the exchange of truths that is at times difficult for Ellen to navigate. The book is rife with misunderstandings, omissions of truth, sudden reversals, and words that cut deep, but ultimately it is honest communication that redeems. Silence, too, weighs heavily on the characters throughout the story, and yet the book is filled with lush descriptions and lengthy, well-tuned sentences, as if to make up for those voids.

[P.S. Dobie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the characters in PAPER IS WHITE, and the story it tells. The main character, Ellen, is funny, smart, kind and yet a little screwed up. A very likeable human, whose few small mistakes and silences create bigger problems as she and her girlfriend Francine try to navigate their way through planning their wedding in a world before gay marriage was legal, and in the face of familial incomprehension. Ellen's romantic past and her dead grandmother, her work documenting the memories of Holocaust survivors, and her increasing fascination with one such survivor in particular, form a rich counterpoint to the wedding tale and interweave their own mysteries into the reading experience.

The novel itself is beautifully paced and structured, with absolutely drop-dead lovely prose. It's about family, memory, friendship and love. A great gift for anyone who loves a good story, well told!

[R.L. Maizes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilary Zaid’s PAPER IS WHITE is a beautiful, lyrical novel that examines silence: the silence of Holocaust survivors who will soon disappear and the silence of mourners whose losses are too difficult to speak. Set in dotcom era San Francisco and the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania, the novel has at its heart two relationships. One couple plans a not-yet-legal lesbian marriage; the other two women friends fight to survive the Nazi occupation. Their stories are intertwined by a mystery and by the women’s longings for what they’ve lost. Zaid’s language is gorgeous. Her heart burns a fire on the page.

[Freyja Vanadis · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you looked for the definition of "stereotypical neurotic Jewish woman" in the dictionary, you'd find the name Ellen Margolis. The lead character of this book was neurotic beyond words, definitely way beyond anyone I've ever known. I have no idea how Francine was able to stay with her for so long; I'd have kicked her crazy ass to the curb years ago. Ms. Zaid's writing is incredible, but man oh man. I don't know if she purposely wrote Ellen to be unlikable, but that's certainly the effect she had on me.

[Erin White · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this novel! It's a beautiful love story, set in Oakland, CA in the 90s, and filled with funny moments, heartaches, marvelously real and tender and complex depictions of a love affair between two women. It was a pleasure to read.

[Eaton Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

One young woman's late 20th century search for marriage equality and the truth about the Holocaust play off each other in PAPER IS WHITE, two distinct and yet merging worlds, in a dialogue of whispers.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the comfortable feel of this book. It took place in my hood and had characters from my life. I just found it slow going with not enough plot.

[ND · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book. It is great and my friend wrote it! Will appeal to women, people with families, Jews, lesbians, and those interested in all of the above, plus the Holocaust.

[Ellen Kozisek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book. Read the description because no way can I do it justice trying to summarize it.

The books I read tend to be heavy on action. Fantasy books with heroines taking on those who would do harm. This was nothing like that. A person dealing with life, her past, and the past of her people, while planning her own future. A very good book.

Although this book isn't set far in the past, I think it qualifies as historical fiction. The experience of Jewishness won't have changed much, but we also, in reading, have an experience of what is was like for two women to choose to marry and plan a wedding before they could be legally married.

[Cristina Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the survivor's stories are told Gay women also find their way to acceptance in a time where there was still so much unacceptance. There is a consciousness in this story and in a rather interesting way each become intertwined when it is found that before the war a survivor had such a relationship and in freedom one married and was unable to express her own identity quietly keeping the love letters.
I am sure that this helped the person listening to survivor stories to give it ago when I saw the sad parallel.

Rather a gem of a book

[Karin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilary Zaid's debut novel, “Paper is White,” is a beautiful story of love, remembrance, silence, and celebration. Balancing weighted subjects with blue skies and beautiful slices of cake, with wedding arrangements and secret encounters, Zaid measures out humor with generosity, hope with passion, even grief with impossible understanding. Through narrative spun in first person, lead character and heroine Ellen Margolis finds her way in late 90s San Francisco, where elderly Holocaust survivors reveal their stories, relationships grow close and become divided, and the past lies like a wedding veil across the future. Of course, reading the novel is the best way to understand. So! 1) Buy PAPER IS WHITE. 2) Read PAPER IS WHITE. 3) Love PAPER IS WHITE. & then 4) which is Lagniappe, “that little extra,” and this is when you jump up and down at your favorite bakery, choose a piece of Doberge or perhaps a Petit Four or a cupcake laced in buttercream frosting, and taste this book. It’s delicious!

[Dennis Fischman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was published by a press that specializes in lesbian fiction, and you can read it for that reason, but be aware: it’s one of the most Jewish books you will ever read.

From facial expressions to philosophies, from bits of ancient and modern history to family history, everything about this novel is deeply immersed in Judaism. I see one other reader on Quora, a non-Jewish lesbian, quoting bits of it to her Jewish partner and leaving her bemused.

Sad to say, I think the romantic couple at the center of the book are not fully realized. Ellen is all tics and anecdotes. Francine is about as close to unflappable as you can get, and as close to being a Protestant as she could be without making this a book about interfaith marriage.

In some ways, I would have liked the entire book to be told from the point of view of Anya Kamenetz, the older lesbian who survived the Holocaust—but she never would have committed her story to paper.

[Janine Kovac · Rating 5 out of 5]

The jacket copy will tell you that Paper is White is the story of Ellen Margolis, an oral historian who records stories from Holocaust survivors, and her fiancé as they plan their wedding in pre-marriage equality California. But really this a book about secrets and stories, what we chose to share and what we chose to keep for ourselves and the impact our silence has on those to closest to us.

I also enjoyed this book because it takes place in my neighborhood: Rockridge in Oakland and took particular pleasure in remembering San Francisco in its early dot-com days.

[Marissa Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book a few years ago when it first came out and am just now reviewing it. It's so fantastic!! I love queer books by and about queer people, so this one interested me from the start, but the story is truly unique and compelling, centering on a lesbian in San Francisco who records stories from Holocaust survivors. This story is about a romantic relationship, yes, but it's also about generational trauma, history, Judaism, and chosen and found families. It's honestly gorgeous and so moving. I can't recommend it enough!

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Named for a Yiddish lullaby, this particularly alludes to a wedding, and the strongest storyline in this book. But right underneath that we’re talking about trauma, memory and loss.

Ellen Margolis is a young Holocaust historian gathering oral testimonies in the late 1990s. She’s also in a long term committed relationship with Francine, and discussing the possibility of marriage during the beginning of the gay community trying to grapple with that ritual.

I believe author Hilary Zaid set this novel in the mid-90s because that’s the time she started drafting it, and it also coincides with her own young adulthood. But it’s undoubtedly poignant, too—the gay community just starting to be normalized enough to debate public displays of normal, civic action (like marriage), and the Holocaust survivors starting to die off in earnest. They, too, were silenced and made other—of course by the Holocaust itself, but also by public opinion and sometimes private grapplings that caused them to suppress their stories. But time is running out, and soon what first hand stories can be told of this singular, horrific time will be buried.

More personally for Ellen, many of the women she interviews remind her of her grandmother—not a survivor herself (at least not of the Holocaust, but there’s reference given in this book to the broader trauma against anti-Jewish violence throughout history). Ellen’s grandmother died before she could come out to her, and the main woman, Anya, whom Ellen starts working with happened to have a female lover in the Lithuanian Kovno ghetto.

(One aspect that worked really well for me, though I'm definitely biased, is how Ellen and Francine planned a Jewish ceremony with their Star Wars-fanatic rabbi. And secretly, their family and friends contributed to a chuppah made like a quilt with squares about their lives--feklempt!
I want that now if I get married)

Zaid wrote in an interview that she excised several characters and subplots throughout drafts, though to be honest, I think she could have done a little more deleting. The story was confusing to follow at first—with Ellen’s best friend Fiona and her girlfriend Francine, all coming together to discuss weddings while Ellen is secretly speaking to a disembodied voice on the phone whom she thinks might be her dead grandmother (turns out to be Anya instead.) To be fair, maybe the first scene was meant to be confusing, since it was certainly disorienting for Ellen!

But there was still so much name dropping in the novel, from Ellen and Francine’s friends to former lovers to family members and work colleagues that, frankly, I forgot most of them once they left the page. Then I’d be confused when they showed up again, especially if something significant was happening between them and Ellen.

I like the idea of Ellen’s first girlfriend, who broke her heart (and basically “fled” to heterosexuality) because it felt raw and real on both a societal/LGBTQ level and a personal level. Then Fiona ended up abandoning Ellen, which I appreciated maybe for biased reasons—I know what it’s like to be abandoned by friends—but was it too much? On top of past and present trauma with Francine’s family as well? I appreciate what Zaid was trying to do with comparing these traumas and how people process them, to how Anya processed the Holocaust and the loss of her lover. But maybe Zaid should have just stuck with one or two examples. After awhile, all these personal and familial hurdles in front of the wedding started to feel tedious.

But the premise was still very moving—probing trauma and redemption and relationships. Zaid did a great job from the prism of the late 1990s as well, though I can’t say I minded the 2008 postscript, with a reminder of lengths traveled and successes gained in normalization and civil rights for the LGBTQ community.

[Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Awww, damn. A fascinating, great premise (you don't get to hear too often about queer Holocaust survivors). Zaid does a great job of dropping us into Ellen's thoughts, so that we believe what she thinks, even when she's wrong. The parts of the book that show us Ellen at work and Ellen with the survivor draw me in. The parts that show her relationship with her girlfriend and family I could do without. (Oh I could also completely do without her scraping all the skin off her foot, pardon me while I barf, how did her foot not get infected!?) I didn't feel a connection between the two women at all. It felt forced and strained - not the relationship part; part of the point of the book I think is to show how Ellen's obsession strains her relationship with her girlfriend -- but there is just no chemistry. They seem like roommates.

Such promise in this one, not delivered. Wouldn't recommend.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

even beyond the fact that i am this book’s perfect target audience in important ways—like it’s about gay jews in oakland—its exploration of memory made me feel really seen. it put words to abstract things i think about all the time, like my relationship to a tradition made for cis straight people and my relationship to holocaust memory as someone not descended from survivors. i don’t know that i agree with all of ellen and francine’s decisions, and i liked that.

small point of annoyance: in a book so thoroughly steeped in ashkenazi culture, i was surprised that hamantaschen were such an important plot device and purim was never once mentioned. maybe that was an intentional encapsulation of assimilation, but it felt like an omission that left that storyline less rich. i also wish the postscript were a little less harry-potter heavy handed