The Wait is Over! Open 7 Dci s On The Bookshelf Phone: 248/926-8013 • Luna% & Dinnet. • Fax: 31162 _Novi Rd INN oo A at 14 Mile 248/926-8043 847250 Family Restaurant OPEN 7 DAYS Try our New BBQ Salmon Sun – Thurs 11 am — 10 pm Fri — Sat 11 am — 11 pm SLAB OF RIBS FOR TWO-1 . .VR. BBQ B.1141. 'CHICKEN. 00It.TWO'. • • .. • • • • •With . orWlthout Skin • Jewish Soul Russian-born author mixes sadness and humor in her debut short-story collection. . • 1/ICILWEk ..210TATOE5....•21tAV4S-and.ZGARLIC:BREADS toii.thmiL5erortiei toke.§16/30/04: ORCHARD LAKE RD. SOUTH OF 14 • Farmington Hills • 851-7000 Budget Generators 24 Hour Emergency Service Home & Commercial Generator Systems FOVVr. Problems Outages? LoseWer gin! ever SAN DEE BRAWARSKY Special to the Jewish News he sparkling stories in Lara Vapnyar's debut collection, There Are Jews in My House (Pantheon; $17.95), are as Russian as the kasha Aunt Galya cooks, washed down by her homemade moon- shine, in "Love Lessons." Vapnyar's suc- cess story is an American fairytale. TI . Light up your whole home Mike Hovey 248.722.5090 from $1995 includes generator or 248.705.3126 SERVICE PANEL $295 Inside, 10 circuit, 100 amp Call for your Free Estimate 846250 Lara Vapnyar has crafted six miniatures of contemporary Russian life in Moscow and Brooklyn. A Family Tradition Villa Maria ristorante 7935 West Maple Corner of Haggerty & Maple West Bloomfield, MI 48322 248-960-4800 Villa Maria's hosts, Michael and Lisa, invite you to continue to enjoy the Al Valente family legacy. Villa Maria is still owned and operated by family members. We continue to use the recipes handed down over the generations and use only the finest ingredients in these treasured dishes, including fresh produce from our own summer garden. We hope you will enjoy dining with our family. 822530 Now offering in-home, office or corporate catering Jeffrey L. Rosenberg Farmington Hills Kosher Catering Spring into fresh, warm cotton candy Telephone 248-626-5702 5/28 2004 42 Try our new Slurpee Machine Fax 248-865-7845 Mat Shalom Synagogue 837620 Watch for Kosher All-You-Can-Eat Buffets Her book has been published to criti- cal acclaim, and Vapnyar's already had two stories published in the New Yorker. Recently, the 32-year-old author was photographed for Vani t y Fair modeling a Vera Wang dress in a downtown New York City restaurant. All this is even more remarkable for the fact that she' an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, who didn't speak much English when she arrived in New York 10 years ago. One of the six stories in There Are Jews in My House is set in Brooklyn, and the others are set in Moscow and other places in the former Soviet Union. They are peopled by children, mothers, often grandparents, teachers, mostly Jews, with few fathers in sight. Vapnyar illuminates their interior lives while also piling on rich domestic details; there are quiet betrayals, unex- pected encounters, disappointments, moments of love. Her writing style is straightforward and intuitive, with understated humor, creating thoroughly engaging stories. Other Jewish newcomers to America have written well about their new and old countries, but writers like Abraham Cahan and Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote in Yiddish, and their works have been translated into English. More recently, Russian-born Gary Shteyngart set his celebrated first novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, in the world of recent immigrants. He writes in English, having grown up mostly in New York (he came here at age 7). Vapnyar went through the Moscow school system and earned a master's degree in Russian language and litera- ture before moving to New York. That her English is newly acquired and self- taught is not at all apparent from her writing. In 1994, when Vapnyar arrived in New York, she thought that she knew English from her Moscow studies, she says in an interview. But she quickly realized that not only was her compre- hension of New York English very limited, she couldn't under- stand television and books — and people she met couldn't understand her. Vapnyar was Lara Vapnyar: "There supposed to were stories inside of me that I had no idea study in a pro- gram for new I -wanted to tell." immigrants, but a difficult pregnancy kept her home- bound in Brooklyn. So she began her own language study, reading novels like those of Jane Austen, which she had read in Russian, and then reading romance novels. It was the latter that really boosted her skills. "The plots are so predictable," she says, "You really don't need English to understand." But learning the language wasn't easy, she says, asserting, with her Russian accent, "I'm still learning English." It was only four years ago that she began to think of herself as a writer. In