FICTION

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RiCHARD TELEKY

Local bookworms suggest you reach for these works
to make your summer reading more enjoyable.

THE PARIS YEARS

O F

ROSIE KAMIN

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From the Community

From the IN staff

Sharon Cohen, librarian at Congregation Shaarey Zedek:
The First Stone by John Briley
A Swimming Across the Hudson by Joshua Henkin

Sy Monello, editorial assistant
The Grass Harp by Truman Capote
If I Never Get Back by Darryl Brock

Rabbi Avraharn Jacobovitz, Machon ETorah
Infirtned Soul by Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb
Beyond Your Ego by Dr. Judith Mishell

Shelli DorfZnan, editorial staff
The Notebook by. Nicholas Sparks
The Winner by David Baldacci

Mae Weine, librarian at Congregation Beth Abraham
Hillel Moses
Persian Brides by Dorit Rabinyan
The Greatest Letvish Stories Ever Told selected and retold by
David Pattervin

Alan Hitsky, associate editor
The Color of mater by James McBride
Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom

‘a& `.

`The Paris Years
of Rosie Kamin'

By Richard Teleky
Steerforth Press, 218 pp., $2400.

Rosie Kamin, a 40-year-old American
who has lived in Paris almost since grad-
uating from college, suffers through an
annus horribilis in this short character
study by Richard Teleky, a Toronto-
based writer and professor.
An old lover turns up and establishes
himself as an unsettling Greek chorus in
her life. Her insensitive sister flies over
from New York twice to harangue her
in the name of love and family. Her
companion of several years, Serge, hav-
ing hidden the nature and seriousness of
his illness from her, dies of liver disease.
The loss of the man Rosie had hoped
to grow old with and her trouble coping
with that loss echo the sorrows of a
youth she moved to Paris to escape. Her
mother, a Holocaust survivor, commit-
ted suicide when Rosie and her sister
were in college. She left Rosie to care for
a demanding, unloving father and con-
tend with a dreary, overbearing extend-
ed family. In the wake of Serge's death,
Rosie slides toward madness and consid-
ers suicide for herself.
But somehow this is not a depressing
novel. We learn how Rosie overcame a
youth marked by love withheld and
became a person able to trust and give
her heart.
There are lapses in craftsmanship (we
need to hear Rosie say, "But he didn't
drink that much!" only so many times).
And Richard Teleky doesn't seem to
know just how to end the novel once
Rosie decides not to kill herself.
But for the most part, he manages to
provide a fresh angle on the child-of-
survivors sub-genre while creating an
offbeat character readers can care about.

— Ellen Jaffe-Gill

er
ulie 'Wiener staff writer
,$ister's Bones by Cathi Hanauer
Sweet Hereafter Russell Banks

sa„z44,0%,N"-

Judith Bolton Fasman is books editor of the Balti-
more Jewish Times.
Melinda Greenberg is Lifestyles editor of the Balti-
more Jewish Times.
Jonathan Groner is managing editor of Legal Times
in Washington, D. C.
Ellen Jaffe Gill is editor of "The Jewish Woman's
Book ofWisdom," to be published in October by Birch
Lane Press.
Susan Katz Miller has been a reporter for Newsweek
and New Scientist magazines.
Amanda Krotki is editorial assistant at the Baltimore
Jewish Times.
Steven H. Pollak is editorial intern at the Baltimore
Jewish Times.

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4i4 oM itksk :

6/12
1998

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