By Beth Kissileff
Finally, a novel about Israel by an American Jew that’s written well and without sentimentality. Joan Leegant’s “Wherever You Go” is unafraid to address the pivotal but ambiguous role that Israel plays in providing an identity for certain types of American Jews. Israel, in this novel, neither burnishes nor tarnishes outsiders through its touch, but provides a specific physical setting, whose glow is, in turn, both toxic and lovely.
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By Beth Kissileff
Katharine Weber is the author of the award-winning novel, “Triangle” about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Her new novel, “True Confections,” plays with the characters’ and readers’ sense of truth. In the spirit of protagonist Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky, the narrator of “True Confections,” the following interview may not have happened exactly as written. But these words nevertheless record truth and were approved by Weber.
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By Beth Kissileff
Look online, and you’ll see a Web site for Zip’s Candies, complete with an online order form for their three varieties of confections. Katharine Weber’s new novel, “True Confections,” is about a candy company, Zip’s Candies, and the lives and loves of the Ziplinsky family, who manufacture these delectable sweets.
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By Beth Kissileff
Literary critic Frank Kermode, in his 1996 work, “The Sense of an Ending,” reminds us that we must often re-evaluate an entire text in light of its conclusion. With that in mind, let us examine the end of the Torah. On a plot level, we all know that Moses dies. Fine. But which are the last of all the 613 injunctions rabbinic interpretation derives from the Torah text?Read More
