arts & entertainment

Our annual summer reading roundup offers more than 50 new titles enjoy!

Gail Zimmerman
Arts Editor

In The Innocents (Voice), debut novelist
Francesca Segal was inspired to reimagine
Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence —
which skewered stifling fin de siecle New
York society — for the modern age. Set
in the modern-day upper-crust Jewish
community of North West London, still
under the shadow of the Holocaust and
where the bonds of family and tradition
run deep, Adam Newman, smugly self-
satisfied and newly engaged to the lovely
and wealthy Rachel Gilbert, is forced to re-
examine his life's path when his fiancee's
prodigal cousin, Ellie Schneider, returns
to London from New York. With rumors
of a scandal swirling around Ellie, Adam
is suddenly torn between security and
exhilaration, tradition and independence.

In Friends Like Us (Knopf), Lauren Fox
offers up an astute and funny look at the
fragility of friendship; Willa, the book's
Jewish narrator, and Jane are 20-some-
thing best friends and roommates, but
when Willa's old friend Ben (once nerdy
but now tall and handsome) shows up and

falls for Jane, Willa is torn between her
good-natured self and feeling like a third
wheel, challenging the girls' relationship.

Saving Ruth (Morrow) by Zoe Fishman is
the story of an outspoken, smart, slightly
overweight young Jewish woman who
doesn't quite fit into her conservative
Alabama town; she probably would have
preferred to be a blond Baptist cheer-
leader. When she returns home after a year
in college, she and her brother face some
tough truths about their own family after
a tragedy. Fishman, who grew up in the
South, has written an uncommon coming-
of-age story and tale of siblings.

A debut novel, The Year of the Gadfly
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by Jennifer
Miller is a coming-of-age story set in
a New England prep school. Iris is an
aspiring journalist who is moved to a
new school after her best friend dies; she
works to expose the school's secret society
and blackmail schemes. Miller, the author
of Inheriting the Holy Land: An American's
Search for Hope in the Middle East, was
inspired in part by the loss of a close
friend when she was in high school.

The Red Book (Voice) by Deborah
Copaken Kogan, author of the memoir
Shutterbabe (about her years as a war pho-

tographer), has written a novel about old
friends meeting up at their 20th Harvard
reunion —and just how far from perfect
their lives really are. The title refers to
a compilation of self-written autobio-
graphical essays by alumni distributed
just before the reunion. Jewish character
Mia Mandlebaum Zane is a good mother
with well-adjusted children who is blind
to the economic realties suffered by her
Hollywood director husband.

The Invitation (Norton) by Anne Cherian
also involves a reunion. Here, college
friends gather at the invitation of Vic for
the college graduation of his son. Vic was
the first member of his Indian family to
attend college and to speak English; his
son isn't particularly pleased with the
reunion plans. For Vic and his Indian
friends, it's the 25th anniversary of their
own graduation. One of the women tries
to keep quiet the fact that her marriage
is in trouble as her American husband is
discovering his Jewish roots. Cherian is
the author of A Good Indian Wife.

Hannah Brown, movie critic for the
Jerusalem Post and the mother of an autis-
tic child, has written a novel, if I Could
Tell You (Vantage Point/paperback), based
on her own experiences; whether trying
to keep their marriages alive or coming

to terms with being single mothers, four
New York City women (including an Israeli
physical therapist married into an Italian
family in Brooklyn) illustrate how, in
their monthly support group, they come
to sustain one another, realizing they can
find the strength they need in their shared
experiences.

Alice Mattison's When We Argued All
Night (Harper Perennial/paperback)
illuminates the 65-year friendship of
Brooklyn-born Jews Artie Saltzman
and Harold Abramovitz. From the Great
Depression and World War II to the
McCarthy-era witch hunts; through work,
marriages and life with children and
grandchildren, Artie and Harold turn to
each other, whether for solace or another
good argument. In old age, Harold writes
an obscure autobiography, and a ris-
ing politician, Barack Obama, becomes
involved in its fate.

Elliot Perlman's The Street Sweeper
revolves around two men whose lives
suddenly intersect in unpredictable and
meaningful ways: an African American
ex-convict trying to rebuild his life and a
struggling, Jewish, American-Australian
professor who loses his battle for tenure;
the novel moves from contemporary
New York City and Australia to the Nazi

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