What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories - Couverture rigide

Englander, Nathan

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0307958701 ISBN 13 : 9780307958709

Editeur : Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2012

Synopsis

These eight new stories from the celebrated novelist and short-story writer Nathan Englander display a gifted young author grappling with the great questions of modern life, with a command of language and the imagination that place Englander at the very forefront of contemporary American fiction. The title story, inspired by Raymond Carver's masterpiece, is a provocative portrait of two marriages in which the Holocaust is played out as a devastating parlor game. In the outlandishly dark "Camp Sundown" vigilante justice is undertaken by a group of geriatric campers in a bucolic summer enclave. "Free Fruit for Young Widows" is a small, sharp study in evil, lovingly told by a father to a son. "Sister Hills" chronicles the history of Israel's settlements from the eve of the Yom Kippur War through the present, a political fable constructed around the tale of two mothers who strike a terrible bargain to save a child. Marking a return to two of Englander's classic themes, "Peep Show" and "How We Avenged the Blums" wrestle with sexual longing and ingenuity in the face of adversity and peril. And "Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Side" is suffused with an intimacy and tenderness that break new ground for a writer who seems constantly to be expanding the parameters of what he can achieve in the short form. Beautiful and courageous, funny and achingly sad, Englander's work is a revelation.

A propos du livre

Revue de presse

Praise for Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
 
“Englander’s new collection of stories tells the tangled truth of life in prose that, as ever, surprises the reader with its gnarled beauty . . . Certifiable masterpieces of contemporary short-story art.”
—Michael Chabon
 
“A resounding testament to the power of the short story from a master of the form. Englander’s latest hooks you with the same irresistible intimacy, immediacy and deliciousness of stumbling in on a heated altercation that is absolutely none of your business; it’s what great fiction is all about.”
—Téa Obreht
 
“It takes an exceptional combination of moral humility and moral assurance to integrate fine-grained comedy and large-scale tragedy as daringly as Nathan Englander does.”
—Jonathan Franzen
 
“Courageous and provocative. Edgy and timeless. In Englander’s hands, storytelling is a transformative act. Put him alongside Singer, Carver, and Munro. Englander is, quite simply, one of the very best we have.”
—Colum McCann
 
“Nathan Englander writes the stories I am always hoping for, searching for. These are stories that transport you into other lives, other dreams. This is deft, engrossing, deeply satisfying work. Englander is, to me, the modern master of the form. And this collection is the very best of the best.”
—Geraldine Brooks

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank vividly displays the humor, complexity, and edge that we've come to expect from Nathan Englander's fiction--always animated by a deep, vibrant core of historical resonance."
—Jennifer Egan
 
“Englander’s wisest, funniest, bravest, and most beautiful book. It overflows with revelations and gems.”
—Jonathan Safran Foer
 
“Nathan Englander’s elegant, inquisitive, and hilarious fictions are a working definition of what the modern short story can do.”
—Jonathan Lethem
 
“The depth of Englander’s feeling is the thing that separates him from just about everyone. You can hear his heart thumping feverishly on every page.”
—Dave Eggers
 
“Nathan Englander is one of those rare writers who, like Faulkner, manages to make his seemingly obsessive, insular concerns all the more universal for their specificity. It’s this neat trick, I think, that makes the stories in his new collection so utterly haunting.”
—Richard Russo

“A marvel ... At home in many idioms, Englander unerringly finds the right one for each of his stories...few literary works have better demonstrated their veracity lately than this glorious collection.” – Financial Times
 
“Outstanding...In the title story, two Jewish couples spar relentlessly, and Englander shows an unerring ear for dialogue” – The Independent
 
 “Nathan Englander, a master of short fiction, writes about West Bank settlers and Orthodox families, the Holocaust and mixed marriages, but not to editorialize about them. His real subjects are memory, obsession, choices, and consequences...In Nathan Englander’s eyes, human beings make choices for admirable and regrettable reasons, with good and bad outcomes. His compelling storytelling, his compassion, and his startling originality make Englander an essential writer. This collection confirms his exceptional talents yet again, and it is not to be missed.” –Jewish Book Council
 
 “Few collections are ever heralded as ‘big books’ or are met with as much excitement as Nathan Englander’s. Relieving our unbearable urge for more is What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, stories that possess the age-old wisdom of folktales populated by characters trapped in the net of history confronting the universal capacity for evil and the depths of our longing.” –Vanity Fair
 
One of Newsweek’s 12 for 2012
 
“While so much of today’s Jewish-American fiction revolves around the inheritance of loss and the ancestral need to remember, Englander brilliantly, often hilariously, and occasionally quite jarringly tackles the very nature of memory itself, how extreme the difference can be between generations, and what exactly one owes one’s forbearers when it comes to a heritage of pain and dislocation.” –Interview
 
One of The Millions’ Most Anticipated: The Great 2012 Book Preview
 
“In his new collection, the reader feels the musculature beneath the skin of his short fiction and keenly appreciates that this is where his supreme power lies. Englander is his own writer. One may think of, say, Bernard Malamud as a possible influence, but which masters, if any, guided him in the early stages of his career have been bid adieu as Englander sails his own personally mapped seas.” –Booklist
 
 “Parables of emotional complexity and moral ambiguity, with lessons that are neither easy nor obvious, by a short-story master...The author at his best.” –Kirkus (Starred Review)
 
“Although most of the stories center on Englander’s clear interest in the role religion and history play on his characters’ lives, they also transcend these narrow themes to address the universal with humor and subtle observation...In his wide-ranging new collection, Englander masters the art of the short story with all its craft, humor and compassion.” –Shelf Awareness
 
 “What Englander is saying is that we know ourselves, or don’t, on different levels, that we exist individually and as part of a heritage...Who will hide us? Who are we, really? How do ritual and culture intersect? Such questions exist at the heart of this accomplished collection, in which stories are what make us who we are.” –LA Times
 
 “What’s wonderful about Englander is that all of his stories seem like they would fall flat or foolish in someone—anyone—else’s hands, but somehow he manages to pull it off and leave you breathless at the end.” –Flavorpill (10 New Must-Reads for February)
 
“This volume showcases Mr. Englander’s extraordinary gifts as a writer...a combination of psychological insight, allegorical gravity and sometimes uproarious comedy...to explore how faith and family (and the stories characters tell about faith and family) ineluctably shape an individual’s identity.” –Michiko Kakutani
 
“Englander has sharpened his focus. His subjects are mercy, vengeance and their moody, intractable stepchild, righteousness. He is never deaf to the past or willing to grant us that luxury...A kind of hard-won wisdom spills out on every page...Terrific collection.” –New York Times Book Review
 
“In What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Englander brilliantly weaves the sacred and secular together so deftly as to make them impossible to separate. In doing so, he reveals the ways in which what is holy can be both heartbreaking and hilarious.” –BookPeople’s Blog
 
“Englander’s stories are at times startling, even transgressing. But they ring true and are a funny, chilling joy to read.” –Cleveland Plain Dealer
 
“In a style that successfully mixes humor and seriousness, these are stories to savor. Englander writes with a special gentleness in creations that can e deeply, poignantly sad, or darkly humorous, although never cruel.” –Chicago Jewish Star
 
“The title story of Englander’s book, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank,” is one of the funniest and most impressive stories I’ve read in years...Amusing, tender and insightful.” –Highbrow Magazine
 
“Masterful...sacred, profane and sometimes bitterly funny.” –USA Today
 
“Englander’s second book of stories deserves high praise. It’s audacious and idiosyncratic, darkly clever and brightly faceted...Illustrate why Englander is the world’s best young interpreter of the Jewish dilemma.” –San Francisco Chronicle
 
“What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank is a wonderful collection: entertaining, profound and gently powerful. It confirms Englander’s stature as a serious comic voice.” –Times Literary Supplement
 
“[A] humane, philosophically provocative new story collection.” –Boston Globe
 
“[Englander] never writes less than gorgeously, but when, from narrow confines, he puts his finger on the universal, he’s Shakespeare.” –Bloomberg
 
“Englander’s fictional worlds are fully realized places that celebrate the whole glorious morass of humanity, the ugly and the beautiful, the deadly and the divine, the despairing and the hilarious. In fact, there are few writers alive that are as funny as Englander...Stellar.” –Tottenville Review
 
“Introspective, self-divided, and self-ironical characters recur often in Englander’s stories, cutting the heaviness of the darker themes of loss and violence that permeate the narrative...A wonderful collection.” –Library Journal
 
“[Englander’s] finest work yet. He has a rare range; his clean writing feels fresh, but it vibrates with a c...

Extrait

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

They’re in our house maybe ten minutes and already Mark’s lecturing us on the Israeli occupation. Mark and Lauren live in Jerusalem, and people from there think it gives them the right.
 
Mark is looking all stoic and nodding his head. “If we had what you have down here in South Florida . . . ,” he says, and trails off. “Yup,” he says, and he’s nodding again. “We’d have no troubles at all.”
 
“You do have what we have,” I tell him. “All of it. Sun and palm trees. Old Jews and oranges and the worst drivers around. At this point,” I say, “we’ve probably got more Israelis than you.” Debbie, my wife, she puts a hand on my arm. Her signal that I’m taking a tone, or interrupting someone’s story, sharing something private, or making an inappropriate joke. That’s my cue, and I’m surprised, considering how much I get it, that she ever lets go of my arm.
 
“Yes, you’ve got it all now,” Mark says. “Even terrorists.”
 
I look to Lauren. She’s the one my wife has the relation- ship with—the one who should take charge. But Lauren isn’t going to give her husband any signal. She and Mark ran off to Israel twenty years ago and turned Hassidic, and neither of them will put a hand on the other in public. Not for this. Not to put out a fire.
 
 “Wasn’t Mohamed Atta living right here before 9/11?” Mark says, and now he pantomimes pointing out houses. “Goldberg, Goldberg, Goldberg—Atta. How’d you miss him in this place?”
 
“Other side of town,” I say.
 
“That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what you have that we don’t. Other sides of town. Wrong sides of the tracks. Space upon space.” And now he’s fingering a granite countertop in our kitchen, looking out into the living room and the dining room, staring through the kitchen windows out at the pool. “All this house,” he says, “and one son? Can you imagine?”
 
“No,” Lauren says. And then she turns to us, backing him up. “You should see how we live with ten.”
 
“Ten kids,” I say. “We could get you a reality show with that here in the States. Help you get a bigger place.”
 
The hand is back pulling at my sleeve. “Pictures,” Debbie says. “I want to see the girls.” We all follow Lauren into the den for her purse.
 
“Do you believe it?” Mark says. “Ten girls!” And the way it comes out of his mouth, it’s the first time I like the guy. The first time I think about giving him a chance.
 
...
 
Facebook and Skype brought Deb and Lauren back together. They were glued at the hip growing up. Went to school together their whole lives. Yeshiva school. All girls. Out in Queens through high school and then riding the subway together to one called Central in Manhattan. They stayed best friends forever until I married Deb and turned her secular, and soon after that Lauren met Mark and they went off to the Holy Land and went from Orthodox to ultra-Orthodox, which to me sounds like a repackaged detergent—ORTHODOX ULTRA®, now with more deep-healing power. Because of that, we’re sup- posed to call them Shoshana and Yerucham. Deb’s been doing it. I’m just not saying their names.
 
“You want some water?” I offer. “Coke in the can?” “
 
‘You’—which of us?” Mark says.
 
“You both,” I say. “I’ve got whiskey. Whiskey’s kosher, too,
right?” “If it’s not, I’ll kosher it up real fast,” he says, pretending
to be easygoing. And right then, he takes off that big black hat and plops down on the couch in the den.
 
Lauren’s holding the verticals aside and looking out at the yard. “Two girls from Forest Hills,” she says. “Who ever thought we’d be the mothers of grown-ups?”
 
“Trevor’s sixteen,” Deb says. “You may think he’s a grown-up, and he may think he’s a grown-up—but we, we are not convinced.”
 
“Well,” Lauren says, “then whoever thought we’d have kids raised to think it’s normal to have coconuts crashing out back and lizards climbing the walls?”
 
Right then is when Trev comes padding into the den, all six feet of him, plaid pajama bottoms dragging on the floor and T-shirt full of holes. He’s just woken up and you can tell he’s not sure if he’s still dreaming. We told him we had guests. But there’s Trev, staring at this man in the black suit, a beard rest- ing on the middle of his stomach. And Lauren, I’d met her once before, right when Deb and I got married, but ten girls and a thousand Shabbos dinners later—well, she’s a big woman, in a bad dress and a giant blond Marilyn Monroe wig. Seeing them at the door, I can’t say I wasn’t shocked myself. But the boy, he can’t hide it on his face.
 
“Hey,” he says.
 
And then Deb’s on him, preening and fixing his hair and hugging him. “Trevy, this is my best friend from childhood,” she says. “This is Shoshana, and this is—”
 
“Mark,” I say.
 
“Yerucham,” Mark says, and sticks out a hand. Trev shakes it. Then Trev sticks out his hand, polite, to Lauren. She looks at it, just hanging there in the air—offered.
 
“I don’t shake,” she says. “But I’m so happy to see you. Like meeting my own son. I mean it,” she says. And here she starts to cry, for real. And she and Deb are hugging and Deb’s crying, too. And the boys, we just stand there until Mark looks at his watch and gets himself a good manly grip on Trev’s shoulder.
 
“Sleeping until three on a Sunday? Man, those were the days,” Mark says. “A regular little Rumpleforeskin.” Trev looks at me, and I want to shrug, but Mark’s also looking, so I don’t move. Trev just gives us both his best teenage glare and edges out of the room. As he does, he says, “Baseball practice,” and takes my car keys off the hook by the door to the garage.
 
“There’s gas,” I say. “They let them drive here at sixteen?” Mark says.
 
“Insane.”
 
...
 
“So what brings you,” I say, “after all these years?” Deb’s too far away to grab at me, but her face says it all. “Was I sup- posed to know?” I say. “Jeez, Deb must have told me. She told me, for sure. My fault.”
 
“My mother,” Mark says. “She’s failing and my father’s get- ting old—and they come to us for Sukkot every year. You know?”
 
“I know the holidays,” I say.
 
“They used to fly out to us. For Sukkot and Pesach, both. But they can’t fly now, and I just wanted to get over while things are still good. We haven’t been in America—”
 
“Oh, gosh,” Lauren says. “I’m afraid to think how long it’s been. More than ten years. Twelve,” she says. “Twelve years ago. With the kids, it’s just impossible until enough of them are big. This might be”—and now she plops down on the couch—“this might be my first time in a house with no kids under the roof in that long. Oh my. I’m serious. How weird. I feel faint. And when I say faint,” she says, standing up, giving an oddly girlish spin around, “what I mean is giddy.”
 
“How do you do it?” Deb says. “Ten kids? I really do want to hear.”
 
That’s when I remember. “I forgot your drink,” I say to Mark.
 
“Yes, his drink. That’s how,” Lauren says. “That’s how we cope.”
 
...
 
And that’s how the four of us end up back at the kitchen table with a bottle of vodka between us. I’m not one to get drunk on a Sunday afternoon, but I tell you, with a plan to spend the day with Mark, I jump at the chance. Deb’s drinking, too, but not for the same reason. For her and Lauren, I think they’re reliving a little bit of the wild times. The very small window when they were together, barely grown-up, two young women living in New York on the edge of two worlds. And they just look, the both of them, so overjoyed to be reunited, I think they’re half celebrating and half can’t handle how intense the whole thing is.
Deb says, as she’s already on her second, “This is really racy for us. I mean really racy. We try not to drink much at all these days. We think it sets a bad example for Trevor. It’s not good to drink in front of them right at that age when they’re all transgressive. He’s suddenly so interested in that kind of thing.”
 
“I’m just happy when he’s interested in something,” I say.
 
Deb slaps at the air. “I just don’t think it’s good to make drinking look like it’s fun with a teenager around.”
 
Lauren smiles and straightens her wig. “Does anything we do look fun to our kids?” I laugh at that. Honestly, I’m really liking her more and more.
 
“It’s the age limit that does it,”...

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Date d'édition: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0307958701
• ISBN 13: 9780307958709
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 207