Elijah Visible

by Thane Rosenbaum

With the publication of Elijah Visible, Thane Rosenbaum emerged as a fresh and important new voice on the American literary scene, a young writer in the great Jewish storytelling tradition of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Isaac Babel. In this haunting debut, Rosenbaum weaves together nine postmodern tales about Adam Posner, a young man determined to climb the American corporate ladder, who finds himself paralyzed by he legacy of the Holocaust. Encumbered by the psychic screams of his deceased parents, Posner embodies the disintegration, as well as the spiritual search, of the modern Jewish family. Rosenbaum's stunning portrait of the post-Holocaust world will resonate with contemporary readers of all backgrounds.

Genres: Short Stories, School, Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Lisa]

I think I came across this book because it was referenced in I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors. This collection of stories continues in that vein. My favorite story was "An Act of Defiance," and I found it most interesting when the child of a Holocaust survivor encounters and interacts with a direct Holocaust survivor, and it had the sentence "Because the Nazis, as a people, prided themselves on punctuality, I, as an individual, revel in tardiness." The blurb from Elie Wiesel"Thane Rosenbaum is totally obsessed with the Holocaust..." is really... something.

[Joel Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a little biased because a good friend of mine, Thane Rosenbaum, wrote this book, but...

Now that my qualifier is out of the way -- this is an excellent book of short stories that will keep you turning pages until you finish it in one or two sittings. The stories are not connected to one another, but they feature the experiences of a child of holocaust survivors who have left their sun with an incredibly complex personality and a mix of love, guilt, ambition and all the other things that go along with growing up as the Jewish son required to do all the right things for his parents. EAch person who reads this, assuming that you can relate to the concept, will have his or her favorites. Mine are Cattle Car Complex (about a young Wall St. lawyer trapped in a sky scraper's elevator who thinks he's in asmall train compartment on his way to a concentration camp), Romancing the Yohrzeit Light (about a nighttime tryst between the son and a non-Jewish girl; the Yohrzeit candle represents the son's mother)and Lost in a Sense (about a reunion of childhood friends, reminiscenses and changes).

This was Thane's first book and I highly recommend it.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rosenbaum does some interesting things here with children of Holocaust survivors in the US, but mostly it's heavy handed. Alas.

[Richard Kravitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't really remember anything about the books.