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UNDERGROUND FUGUE

Name: UNDERGROUND FUGUE
Author: Margot Singer
ISBN: 978-1-61219-628-2

by Margot Singer ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 4, 2017

This ambitious first novel never comes fully to life.

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In the months before the July 7 London bombings in 2005, a woman confronts the death of her son, the impending death of her mother, and her own various prejudices.

When she arrives in London to care for her dying mother, Esther’s life is in shambles. She has left her husband and her job as a museum conservationist; she’s also grieving the death of her son in a swimming accident almost three years earlier. Esther doesn’t know quite what to make of her life now. In London, she meets Javad, her mother’s next-door neighbor, an Iranian transplant to England as well as a neuroscientist. Javad lives with his 19-year-old son, Amir, whom Esther is vaguely suspicious of. Singer’s (The Pale of Settlement, 2007) first novel begins in the months before the July 7 terrorist attacks in London, and it is suffused with the paranoia that overtook much of the non-Muslim Western world after 9/11. Esther, who soon begins seeing Javad, suspects Amir of something she can’t quite name; in fact, the first time she lays eyes on him, at 3 a.m. on his own front stoop, she assumes he’s trying to break in. Singer is a capable storyteller, but these suspicions of Esther’s are hard to sympathize with. Actually, they’re a bit too reminiscent of a certain episode of 30 Rock in which Liz Lemon reports her innocent Middle Eastern neighbors to the authorities—except that Singer lacks Tina Fey’s wry, self-eviscerating humor. When July 7 finally arrives, Esther’s and her mother’s fates are meant to implode with Javad’s and Amir’s, but the various storylines ultimately fail to come together. Singer’s plot is too heavily schematic, her prose too effortful, for the novel to breathe on its own.

This ambitious first novel never comes fully to life.

Pub Date: April 4, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-61219-628-2

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Melville House

Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION

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THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

by C.S. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1942

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These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942

ISBN: 0060652934

Page Count: 53

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION

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THE CHOSEN

by Chaim Potok ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 1967

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This first novel, ostensibly about the friendship between two boys, Reuven and Danny, from the time when they are fourteen on opposing yeshiva ball clubs, is actually a gently didactic differentiation between two aspects of the Jewish faith, the Hasidic and the Orthodox. Primarily the Hasidic, the little known mystics with their beards, earlocks and stringently reclusive way of life. According to Reuven's father who is a Zionist, an activist, they are fanatics; according to Danny's, other Jews are apostates and Zionists "goyim." The schisms here are reflected through discussions, between fathers and sons, and through the separation imposed on the two boys for two years which still does not affect their lasting friendship or enduring hopes: Danny goes on to become a psychiatrist refusing his inherited position of "tzaddik"; Reuven a rabbi.... The explanation, in fact exegesis, of Jewish culture and learning, of the special dedication of the Hasidic with its emphasis on mind and soul, is done in sufficiently facile form to engage one's interest and sentiment. The publishers however see a much wider audience for The Chosen. If they "rub their tzitzis for good luck,"—perhaps—although we doubt it.