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THE OTHER SIDE OF ISRAEL

MY JOURNEY ACROSS THE JEWISH/ARAB DIVIDE

Complementing Donna Rosenthal’s iconoclastic study The Israelis (2003), Nathan’s book offers an optimistic—if...

A record of life in the “other Israel,” a place not found in travel brochures nor, usually, in headlines.

“A fact almost unknown outside Israel is that the Jewish state includes a large minority of one million Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship,” writes English-born counselor Nathan. This minority, about a fifth of the population, lives mostly apart from the Jewish majority, leading parallel but almost always poorer lives. When, at the age of 56, she decides to relocate from Tel Aviv to Tamra, a sizeable Palestinian town in Galilee, Nathan’s Jewish Israeli friends warn her that she will be killed, raped or kidnapped; the movers refuse to return to retrieve her empty moving boxes, and of course no one comes to see how she’s doing. The fact, Nathan writes, is that she’s doing just fine living solo among the disenfranchised people of Tamra, salt-of-the-earth types who fear traveling in Jewish areas as much as their Jewish compatriots fear traveling in Arab climes. Nathan writes affectingly of the lives of the people of Tamra, most of whom have little experience beyond the town limits and retain something of the old-fashioned ways, some of which Nathan has made her own: “Since living in Tamra,” she writes, “I find myself appalled every time I return to Europe or America to see the virtually pornographic images of women, and even children, crowding high street billboards.” Nathan’s defense of her newfound neighbors is earnest but not overbearing, though she overplays the theme of the unusualness of her situation as a single Jewish woman among Palestinians. We understand, enough to wince when a Ha’aretz reporter comes calling and Nathan proudly observes, “I was the star of a freak show, and she was intrigued to see my act.”

Complementing Donna Rosenthal’s iconoclastic study The Israelis (2003), Nathan’s book offers an optimistic—if unlikely—vision of a multiethnic nation without divides.

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2005

ISBN: 0-385-51456-5

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Nan A. Talese

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005

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M TRAIN

Not as focused as Just Kids, but an atmospheric, moody, and bittersweet memoir to be savored and pondered.

Iconic poet, writer, and artist Smith (Just Kids, 2010, etc.) articulates the pensive rhythm of her life through the stations of her travels.

Spending much of her time crouched in a corner table of a Greenwich Village cafe sipping coffee, jotting quixotic notes in journals, and “plotting my next move,” the author reflects on the places she’s visited, the personal intercourse, and the impact each played on her past and present selves. She describes a time in 1978 when she planned to open her own cafe, but her plans changed following a chance meeting with MC5 guitarist Fred Sonic Smith, who swiftly stole and sealed her heart with marriage and children. A graceful, ruminative tour guide, Smith writes of traveling together with Fred armed with a vintage 1967 Polaroid to Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni in northwest French Guiana, then of solitary journeys to Frida Kahlo’s Mexican Casa Azul and to the graves of Sylvia Plath, Jean Genet, and a swath of legendary Japanese filmmakers. After being seduced by Rockaway Beach in Queens and indulgently purchasing a ramshackle bungalow there, the property was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy—though she vowed to rebuild. In a hazy, often melancholy narrative, the author synchronizes past memories and contemporary musings on books, art, and Michigan life with Fred. Preferring to write productively from the comfort of her bed, Smith vividly describes herself as “an optimistic zombie propped up by pillows, producing pages of somnambulistic fruit.” She spent seasons of lethargy binge-watching crime TV, arguing with her remote control, venturing out to a spontaneous and awkward meeting with chess great Bobby Fischer, and trekking off to interview Paul Bowles in Tangiers. No matter the distance life may take her, Smith always recovers some semblance of normalcy with the simplistic pleasures of a deli coffee on her Gotham stoop, her mind constantly buoyed by humanity, art, and memory.

Not as focused as Just Kids, but an atmospheric, moody, and bittersweet memoir to be savored and pondered.

Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-101-87510-0

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: July 6, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015

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IN PIECES

Brimming with open introspection, engaging anecdotes, and gorgeous photographs, Field’s moving account sheds light on how...

A beloved actor attempts to assemble her fragmented past.

In her debut memoir, Field (b. 1946) takes to the page to explore her early life and storied acting career; she also pens an extended love letter to her mother, who died in 2011, on the author’s 65th birthday. Described by the author as “drop-your-jaw beautiful,” Margaret Morlan was discovered by a Paramount talent scout while sitting in a Pasadena Playhouse audience and instantly got a career at age 23. Affectionately called “Baa” by Field, Morlan never achieved anywhere near her eldest daughter’s screen credits, but she played a central role throughout Field’s life as both a peerless champion of and “backup generator” to her daughter’s burgeoning talents. Baa was also a complicated source of great psychological trauma, as she failed to protect her daughter from the sexual advances of her stepfather, stuntman Jock Mahoney. While the memoir details the rapid progression of Field’s childhood interest in acting to on-screen success in TV (from Gidget and The Flying Nun to winning the Emmy for Sybil in 1977) and film (for Norma Rae, she won “every award for best actress that existed in the United States”), Field’s narrative of her professional and personal achievements may be best viewed through the lens of her fraught relationship with Baa. “My cherished mother had known…something,” she writes. “What exactly that was, I didn’t want to hear, because even at that time, when I was middle-aged, I couldn’t bear the idea that she hadn’t run to my side….I had accepted the idea that I was broken in an effort to keep my mother whole.” Through acting, Field found a way to constitute herself: “By standing in Norma’s shoes, I felt my own feet. If I could play her, I could be me.”

Brimming with open introspection, engaging anecdotes, and gorgeous photographs, Field’s moving account sheds light on how playing larger-than-life figures has enabled her to keep her feet on the ground.

Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5387-6302-5

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2018

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