Cover Story

READING BUG from page 31

The mayor's capacity to cope with
these problems is tested anew each day,
evoking a sympathetic response from
readers who will inevitably admire his
homespun and respectable approach.
Roiphe knows New York well, having
grown up there — mostly unhappily—
in a wealthy Jewish family she depicted
in her memoir 1185 Park Avenue. This
new book reinforces her fine reputation
as a writer who is more than worthy of
our respect and admiration.

— Morton I. Teicher

THE LAST
JEWISH
SHORTSTOP
IN AMERICA

By Lowell B. Konnie
(Swordfish/Chicago; 210 pp.; $12.95)

arid EPstein has what they call
issues. He's di'Vorced, unem-
ployed, behind on child support
and alimony, and creditors are `crawling
...
up his tuches.
But the protagonist of Lowell Komie's,
The Last Jewish Shortstop in America also
has an idea that might make everything
right: a Hall of Fame for Jewish sports
heroes, housed in a nine-story tall, glass
Star of David, glowing in a blue
Chagall-like light on the side of a subur-
ban Chicago highway.
Epstein seeks investors from old
friends and neighbors, and his idea helps
pay off his debts. But his story takes
unusual turns — simultaneously funriy
and tragic. The chapter on a neighbor-
hood party alone is worth the price of
the book.
Set in Chicago, New York, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Montreal,
Toronto and Ann Arbor, this quick,
funny read won a Small Press Award for
Fiction, and is a student favorite in a
Jewish literature course at the University
of Michigan.
"I teach a course which begins with
Emma Lazarus over a century ago and
comes up to the present," said George
Bornstein, a U-M professor of literature.
Students wanted more Jewish-
American literature from outside the
East Coast, said Bornstein. Shortstop's
Midwestern locale has been a hit with
students, who enjoy the chapter set at
the U-M and its late-night scene that
takes place in Michigan Stadium, said
Bornstein.
"The book touches on a number of
key issues in the course," he said.
'Assimilation, the pros and cons of the

6/25

2004

32

success of the Jews in America, language,
ethnicity, conflict between generations,
post-Holocaust and others. But the
main reason is that it's a great read."
Komie, who graduated from U-M
and received a law degree form
Northwestern University, also is the
author of The Lawyer's Chambers and

Other Stories, Conversations With a
Golden Ballerina and The Night
Swimmer — A Man in London and
Other Stories.
— Harry Kirsbaum,
staffiwriter

LIVE BAIT

By P.J. Tracy
(G.P. Putnam's Sons;
320 pp.; $23.95)

our related murders hit hard in
Minneapolis. The victims are
seniors, and three are Holocaust
survivors.
So starts Live Bait, the second volume
in a mystery series written by mother-
daughter team P.J. Lambrecht and Traci
Lambrecht, whose projects appear using
,.. the author pseudonym P.J. Tracy.
'A detective
mentions a television pro-
,.,.
gram h saw
e .,. about survivors tracking
down Nazis, arid, in reality, that's the
program that gave us the idea for Live
Bait," says P.J. Lambreclii,incent on cre-
ating fictitious characters derived from
the people they watched.
As the Live Bait investigation progress-
es, detectives discover links to other gris-
ly killings in and out of the country, and
the plot grows into an exploration of
revenge and its consequences, ultimately
reaching beyond the immediate crimes
and delving into the past.
The book returns crime fighters Leo
Magozzi and Gino Rolseth from the
authors' first effort, the techno thriller
Monkeewrench. Both law enforcement
officers are puzzled by the viciousness of
the crimes because of the high regard in
which the victims are held by the city's
Jewish and non-Jewish members. The
detectives get leads in solving the mur-
ders through software sleuth Grace
MacBride, the romantic interest of
Magozzi.
"We mulled over the characters creat-
ed for the book, and I became very
attached to the survivors," Traci
Lambrecht says. "Because the issue is so
dark, we lightened it through some of
the police personalities."
The two authors ; who are not Jewish,
put one victim, Morey Gilbert, at the .
center of the story and cover family rifts.
One seems to be due to an inter-reli-

gious marriage but actually is related to
the crimes being solved.
With sympathetic characters, this fast-
paced thriller entices readers to think
through standards, of justice.

— Suzanne Chessler

MORE
FICTION

A Spectacle of Corruption by David Liss
(Random House; 381 pp.; $24.95), a
suspenseful sequel to A Conspiracy of
Paper, follows the adventures of
Benjamin Weaver, a Jewish private inves-
tigator in 18th-century London. Here,
Weaver's challenge is to prove himself
innocent of a crime and clear his name,
while complications and mysteries are
manifold.

Seven Blessings by Ruchama King (St.
Martin's Press; 258 pp.; $23.95) is an
impressive first novel involving match-
making, love and faith in Jerusalem's
Orthodox community. Tsippi, the
matchmaker, works in her husband's
,grocery; "between weighing the onions
and making a clatter on the cash register,
she had pulled off more than 50 mar-
riages." The author's love of Jerusalem,
where she lived for 10 years, is evident
on these pages; King now makes her
home in New Jersey.

The novel She Is Me by Cathleen Schine
(Littkf Browr).; 272 pp.;,-$23.95)1S
comedy of manners about mothers and
love, marriage and motherhood.
Specifically, this is about three genera-
tions of Jewish women and their strug-
gles, with their own selves and with each
other, by a Manhattan writer who is a
Jewish daughter and author of The Love

Letter.

In A Death in Vienna (G.P. Putnam's
Sons; 285 pp.; $25.95), popular protag-
onist Gabriel Allon is back, this time
tracking a bomber who is a friend and
fellow spy, while examining the painful
legacy of the Holocaust, the Vatican's
complicity in aiding war criminals and
the elusive nature of evil.

Binnie Kirshenbaum's An Almost Perfect
Moment (Ecco; 321 pp.; $23.95) tells
the story of Jewish, pretty, flaky teenager
Valentine — who not only bears a
remarkable resemblance • to the Virgin
Mary as she appeared to Bernadette at
Lourdes but seems to shatter the dreams
and hopes of the people around her. Set
in the pre-disco era, this dark comic
novel is about star-crossed lovers, moth-

ers and daughters, doctrines of the
divine and a colorful Jewish community
that once defined Brooklyn.
In his first novel, Crossing California
(Riverhead Books, 419 pp.; $24.95),
playwright/journalist Adam Langer takes
readers on a poignant and hilarious jour-
ney through the intertwining lives of
three families in West Rogers Park, a
Jewish neighborhood in Chicago transi-
tioning between the freewheeling 1970s
and buttoned-down 1980s.

Oy Pioneer (University of Wisconsin
Press; 264 pp.; $19.95), Marleen Barr's
debut novel, is a frothy spoof of acade-
mia, feminism, Jewish mothers, Jewish
humor and Barbara Bush, among oth-
ers, and follows professor Sondra Lear
— a radical and wildly ambitious intel-
lectual subject to the husband-hunting
imperatives of her Jewish mother — as
she make her way through a world of
learning.

1
In her second Molly Blume chiller,
Dream House (Ballantine Books; 382
pp.; $2495), Rochelle Krich follows
newshound Blume into LA's most
exclusive neighborhoods, exploring van-
dalism and perhaps murder as passipris
erupt over the issue of architectural
.,
preservation.

NONFICTION

THE TROUBLE
WITH ISLAM

THE TRUI8tEWITH

By Irshad Manji
(St. Martin's Press;
240 pp.; $22.95)

rshad Manji isn't anyone's typical
Muslim. She's a 35-year old femi-
nist who's openly gay, an outspoken
critic of her faith from the inside. Her
new book, The Trouble with Islam, a
spirited call for reform, has been attract-
ing worldwide attention and controver-
sy, including death threats — her
Toronto home now has bulletproof win-
dows.
The New York Times described her as
"Osama bin Laden's worst enemy." For
her reproach of contemporary Muslims
for their anti-Semitic positions, the jour-
nalist has been called an agent of the
Mossad. She describes herself as a
"Muslim refusenik," a phrase she bor-
rows from Soviet Jews.
"That doesn't mean I refuse to be a
Muslim; it simply means that I refuse to
join an army of automatons in the name
of Allah," she says.