The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden
Every house has a history. Few contain the drama that resides within the “cavernous house” in the Dutch countryside, a sanctuary for sole resident, Isabel den Brave. On occasion Isabel’s brother, Louis, uses the old house as a crash pad for one …
It’s that old rascal, author Gary Shteyngart, sprinkling literary black magic in his latest novel, Vera or Faith. Some critics claim, “it’s the most important book published this year.” Perhaps, but only for readers who love books that excoriate America. For me, the novel is simply…
American Maccabee by author Andrew Porwancher parallels America’s twenty- sixth President to heroic warriors whom Jews celebrate on Chanukah. Granted Roosevelt did not vanquish the Seleucids, nor banish Hellenistic culture from Judea and Samaria. Nevertheless, Porwancher makes a…
There’s never a quiet moment inside the Cohen kitchen, in Brooklyn’s Jewish/Syrian community. Something’s either cooking, simmering, percolating or boiling over. Moreover there’s bubbling, sizzling, stewing and steaming between the three Cohen sisters ---Fortune, Nina and Lucy--- as …
Why would anyone read “a collection of personal letters written over a span of fifty years by an unexceptional, young woman who graduated from an Israeli teacher’s college and spent most of her life in America selling real estate?” Because Happy New Years is a hypnotic epistolary…
