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RARE STUFF by Brett Ashley Kaplan

RARE STUFF

by Brett Ashley Kaplan

Pub Date: Aug. 1st, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-956005-57-8
Publisher: Spuyten Duyvil

Yiddish-speaking whales, a suitcase packed with secrets, and one young woman’s desperate attempt to find answers.

When Sidney Zimmerman’s father, Aaron, dies, she doesn't feel any longed-for closure. Instead, cleaning out his apartment, she uncovers a suitcase hidden in the back of the closet and full of such seemingly random items as a red high-heeled shoe, a paperweight, and a photograph of a man in a fedora, and, on his desk, the manuscript of the unpublished novel Slobgollion. The items in the suitcase turn out to be cryptic clues about Sid’s mother, Dorothy, an amateur cetologist—a scientist who studies whales—who disappeared when Sid was a child. Sid’s search for answers about what happened to her mother spurs the novel along. Things fall into place as Sid and her boyfriend, André, follow Aaron’s mysterious breadcrumbs, and people spring up to help as if placed there by magic: “We’ve been scripted, we’re in one of dad’s books, surely, yet another person hails us as if he jumped out of the suitcase, breathing.” The novel alternates among Sid’s perspective, the long-suffering André’s perspective, and chapters from Aaron’s unpublished manuscript featuring Yiddish-speaking whales trying to save the world from environmental collapse. Kaplan packs a lot into her novel, from cautionary tales about conservation to somewhat superficial discussions on interracial relationships, police brutality, and genocide. And while the novel’s ambitious scope could easily have been its downfall, it's saved by descriptions of tender longing for connection and purpose, particularly realized in André’s chapters, as well as a soft, magical tone.

A dreamy story with surprising emotional resonance.