THE BRONFMAN HAGGADAH

Name: THE BRONFMAN HAGGADAH
Author: Edgar Bronfman

by Edgar Bronfman & Jan Aronson & illustrated by Jan Aronson & developed by Bronfman Associates ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 9, 2014

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Imagine a Passover Seder with participants clutching tablets and listening to the Haggadah being read aloud by soothing male and female voices.

Originally published in 2012, the print version of this very progressive Haggadah has been transformed into a fairly static app with a few animated features. Six short videos featuring the Jewish philanthropist/author and his wife, the illustrator, have been created, but they do little to transform this attractive book into an exciting app. Though there is a full, multivoiced narration, few of the watercolor paintings have been animated. The tiny basket holding Moses travels through the Nile’s waters, and some candle flames flicker, but there are no real interactive features. The illustrator incorporates design elements from various cultures into her nonrepresentational paintings, but perhaps her most original addition is a map showing several possible routes for the Exodus. A traditional rendition of the English version of “Chad Gadya” is sung aloud, and there is an adapted version of “Dayenu,” with English words centering on the modern creation of Israel. Like many in non-Orthodox families today, the author has selected parts of the traditional telling and added some original touches. He quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson and Frederick Douglass and includes a poem about matzo by Marge Piercy. Bronfman’s relation of the story of Moses includes the handing down of the Ten Commandments and a description of the holiday of Shavuot (not usually found in the traditional text). In line with the author’s personal beliefs, he states that “[i]n this Haggadah, ‘God’ is understood as ‘energy’—an energy that is both transcendent (beyond us) and immanent (within us).” Little Hebrew is used, and the traditional prayers are mentioned but not printed, even in English. Miriam’s cup, a feminist tradition, is included, and the custom of inviting the prophet Elijah has been inserted closer to the beginning of the Seder than is traditional. There are a few unfortunate typos that should be corrected in an update. Families who are interested in a contemporary, inclusive, nontraditional approach to the holiday may find this version useful for sharing with older children before the holiday (and techies may actually use it at the holiday feast itself). (glossary)

Pub Date: March 9, 2014

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Bronfman Associates

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014

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THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

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Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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THEN SHE WAS GONE

by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

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Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.