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A BOOK THAT WAS LOST

Name: A BOOK THAT WAS LOST
Author: S.Y. Agnon
ISBN: 0-8052-4120-5

AND OTHER STORIES

by S.Y. Agnon ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1995

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Twenty-five stories by the late giant of modern Hebrew literature. Some of these tales—11 in all—appeared in Twenty-One Stories (1970); over half are appearing in English for the first time. In their vigorous, scholarly commentary, editors Mintz (Modern Hebrew Literature/Brandeis) and Hoffman (English and Comparative Literature/Fordham) stress the stories' connections with Agnon's own life (18881970), in particular the narrators' travels through the lost, remembered, and emerging cultures of Polish and German Jewry and the land of Israel before and after statehood. Although the editors warn that readers unacquainted with classical or modern Hebrew, or the traditional practice, ritual, and learning of the Diaspora, will have difficulty with Agnon's opaque symbols and obscure inflections, in fact most of the tales are immediately involving even without the additionally helpful notes and glossary. The spare, moving title piece sounds an existential theme that often pulses in Agnon's work. The narrator recalls his vanished Polish village, in which as a youth he found a rabbinical commentary by a saintly, long-dead man and made small, loving sacrifices in order to send the manuscript to the great library in Jerusalem. But the book (by this time a solid presence in the reader's mind) never arrived; like the slaughtered inhabitants of the extinct town, it now exists only in the narrator's acute yearning for its restoration. In ``On the Road,'' ghosts arise from mists and return; ``The Sign'' brings a murdered village to life in a dead cantor's song, which itself disappears...where? Crucial decisions—to act, to fill a belly, to feel the love of a woman (as in ``Hill of Sand'')—are often ironically sidestepped. Important work, carefully and attractively presented, from the 1966 Nobel-winner.

Pub Date: May 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-8052-4120-5

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Schocken

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
TO THIS DAY
by S.Y. Agnon & translated by Hillel Halkin

- BOOK REVIEW
ONLY YESTERDAY
by S.Y. Agnon & translated by Barbara Harshav

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAND OF SWEET FOREVER
by Harper Lee ; edited by Casey Cep

- BOOK REVIEW
GO SET A WATCHMAN
by Harper Lee

- SEEN & HEARD
The Snowy Day Is NYC Library’s Most Popular Book

- SEEN & HEARD
ALA Releases List of 2020’s Most Challenged Books

- SEEN & HEARD
NYT Readers Voting on Best Book of Past 125 Years

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).