A bighearted novel about the past’s refusal to recede.
In Bornstein’s debut novel, an American Jew’s story unfolds simultaneously across two timelines.
Born in Paris to Jews from Poland and Morocco and raised in both Israel and Brooklyn, the polyglot Bram Goodman represents the whole of the Diaspora. In 1983, Bram, recently discharged from the Israeli Defense Force and fresh from a summer in Côte d’Azur teaching wealthy children to swim, has just returned to his semi-hometown of New York City. He’s followed a girl there: Liz Ellis, an idealistic Columbia Law grad (and gentile) from Arizona who’s just taken a job at a legal nonprofit. Falling in love with Liz helps distract Bram from the fact that he hasn’t yet grappled with the death of his Israeli cousin, Yoni, who died by suicide following their service in the Lebanon War. In 2015, 32 years later, a middle-aged Bram occupies an entirely different position in life. He and Liz are living in Queens with three kids and a pair of ornery upstairs tenants. Bram serves as the executive director of The Linden Hills Community House, located in a mostly Black neighborhood of south Brooklyn. His progressive 17-year-old daughter, Jenna, is critical of all things Israel, while his youngest, Theo, is preparing to undergo his bar mitzvah. The specter of a Trump presidency hangs in the air, as does the ghost of Yoni, whose death—and what it means—Bram still hasn’t fully worked out. Tied up in Bram’s grief is a never-realized dream Yoni had for the two of them to swim the English Channel (“A two-way, back and forth,” he explains. “We’d be the first Israeli cousins to do so”). The novel alternates between the two timelines, which mirror and inform each other in unexpected ways, moving Bram (and the reader) inevitably back to Israel.
The author has an observant eye, summoning both eras of New York in brilliant detail and persuasively depicting the same characters at very different times of life. The dialogue is particularly sharp and laden with dark humor, as when Bram dismisses Theo’s worry that any Jews in New York would vote for Donald Trump: “ ‘Dylan Mandelbaum told me his father thinks Trump would be good for Israel.’ ‘Dylan Mandelbaum’s father would probably go to Dr. Mengele for a second opinion.’ ” At one point Bram praises Philip Roth, and Bram’s preoccupations—how to be both an Israeli Jew and a secular American progressive with a shiksa wife—feel very much of the generation raised on Roth’s novels. It’s possible that younger readers will not find these concerns quite so compelling. There are some pacing issues as well: The book is long at 470 pages, and its plot accumulates more than unfurls. Even so, scene by scene, chapter by chapter, the novel is a pleasure to read. At all times, the writing displays a keen wit and a deep sense of history. It’s a great novel of New York in the Trump era and a tender look at the way the progression of time makes immigrants of us all.
A bighearted novel about the past’s refusal to recede.Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 979-8886790382
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Luminare Press
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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