RESONANCE

by Michael Tobin & Daniel Chertoff ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

American Sophie Hadad, on leave from college and working in Paris’ Shakespeare and Company, discovers the diary of a Jewish sculptor in this historical novel.

Sophie Hadad, 21, is a “tumbleweed,” as those allowed by owner George Whitman to “shelve, sweep, argue, and read” at Shakespeare and Company in Paris, are called. It’s 1971, and Sophie, from West Virginia, with Lebanese ancestry, works at the bookshop. She was asked to take a leave of absence from college after her English lit professor made a pass at her. She meets Paris-based Argentinian journalist Raphael, of Syrian Lebanese descent, with whom she’s initially a little nervous. Her life transforms when she discovers the diary of Anna Grinberg, found when Whitman tasked her to clear out a storage area. Anna chronicles coming to Paris from Warsaw in 1922, leaving behind a grandfather, “the only significant adult in my life. The rest are gone, killed by the Jew-haters and the Spanish flu.” She has a brief push-pull affair with Ernest Hemingway, whose writer’s studio sits across the hall from her Paris apartment, and participates in the Paris art scene and the Shakespeare and Company crowd, meeting Stein, Joyce, Pound, Fitzgerald, and others. She trains with Bourdelle and becomes an acclaimed sculptor. As World War II approaches, Anna, who’s doing welding work to survive, meets a French Jewish banker who urges action to rescue Jews, an effort she joins. Her diary entries end shortly thereafter. Sophie shares the diary with Raphael, and through his connection to Janet Flanner, a journalist at the New Yorker from 1925-1975, learns Anna’s fate, which gives Sophie the fortitude to make weighty decisions about her own life.  

The authors—clinical psychologist Tobin, whose most recent work is The Veil (2024), and finance professional Chertoff, who previously penned Palestine Posts: An Eyewitness Account of the Birth of Israel (2019)—share how they “had this crazy idea that it would be fun to write a novel together, on a subject [they] both love – Paris in the 1920s and Shakespeare and Co.” Chertoff himself was a “tumbleweed” in the 1970s during Whitman’s tenure, and this duo beautifully captures that period and, of course, the heady times of the Sylvia Beach–era of the bookshop, with an array of enjoyable walk-ons by the famous players in the mode of Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. The authors also showcase the artistic process in wonderful detail. Anna unlearns preconceived ideas about art under the tutelage of Bourdelle, who instructs her to “capture movement in clay. Three hands: one gripping in tension, one releasing an object, and one reaching for something unseen.” This book offers a fascinating perspective on Cezanne’s influence on Hemingway’s prose (“The eye doesn’t see all at once; it moves from close to far—like layers: first, the roses in sharp focus, then the rooftops softening in the distance, the hills fading into pale blue. It’s like a patchwork of details that build a complete picture….Hemingway must have learned from Cezanne how to write like the eye sees”). There are many topical riches here, although Anna’s Jewish identity and the impact of Nazism serve as its core. While Sophie disappears somewhat as Anna’s diary entries take up a significant part of this book, her reappearance to conclude the novel, and her affinity for and connections to Anna, provide satisfying closure.

A lyrical coming-of-age novel conveyed via the prism of a Jewish artist’s life.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 344

Publisher: Self

Review Posted Online: July 14, 2026

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION