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THE SOUND OF OUR STEPS

Name: THE SOUND OF OUR STEPS
Author: Ronit Matalon
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9160-1

by Ronit Matalon ; translated by Dalya Bilu ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 4, 2015

Lovely and difficult.

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A novel in stories from the Israeli author of The One Facing Us (1998) and Bliss (2003).

This is the tale of an Egyptian-Jewish family living in a concrete shack on the outskirts of Tel Aviv in the 1950s and ’60s. There's a father—mostly absent—and a boy and two girls. Then there's the mother, Lucette, and “the mother” is precisely how her children refer to her. To them, she isn’t an individual person so much as she is a force—protean, predictably unpredictable, not quite human. “Our knowledge of her, which was made up of countless inner withdrawals, silent understandings and agreements, a weave of dread and love that kept changing its colors, had us riveted.” The Lucette that her children see is Lucette the immigrant, a woman who works 12-hour days at menial jobs, a woman who is now known by a name in a language she doesn’t even understand—her Hebrew name is Lavana; she speaks only Arabic and French. Everything soft and feminine she left behind in Egypt. Seen through the eyes of the younger daughter, Lucette’s existential instability is the central problem of the book. For this girl, the volatile politics of midcentury Israel mean nothing. It’s the war at home—the home her family struggles to regard as a home, the home that is a physical extension of the mother—that shapes her life. There’s little dialogue here, the setting barely shifts, and most of the action is internal. What Matalon offers instead of a traditional plot is a collection of nearly static scenes, many just a few hundred words in length. Cumulatively, they don’t create a narrative so much as a universe, a universe as rich and carefully drawn as it is harsh. Lucette’s youngest child is a careful observer—both as a girl and as an adult—and there is poetry on every page.

Lovely and difficult.

Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-8050-9160-1

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
AND THE BRIDE CLOSED THE DOOR
by Ronit Matalon ; translated by Jessica Cohen

- BOOK REVIEW
BLISS
by Ronit Matalon & translated by Jessica Cohen

- PROFILES
Ronit Matalon

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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

- BOOK REVIEW
ALL MY ROAD BEFORE ME
by C.S. Lewis

- BOOK REVIEW
PRESENT CONCERNS
by C.S. Lewis

- BOOK REVIEW
BOXEN
by C.S. Lewis

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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.