An Hour in Paradise: Stories [Hardcover]

Joan Leegant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2003

A wonderful new voice combining the offbeat sensibility of Nathan Englander and the compassionate eye of Allegra Goodman.

In settings from Jerusalem to Queens, from Hollywood's outskirts to Sarasota, Florida, the characters in this mesmerizing debut collection are drawn to the seductions of religion, soldiering on in search of divine and human connection. A former drug dealer turned yeshiva student faces his past with a dying AIDS patient. A disaffected American in the ancient city of Safed ventures into Kabbalist mysticism and gets more than he bargained for. A rabbi whose morning minyan is visited by a pair of Siamese twins considers the possibility that his guests are not mere mortals. An aging Jerusalemite chronicles his country's changes during the biblical year of rest. By turns poignant and comic, unflinching and compassionate—with a dose of fabulist daring—An Hour in Paradise explores the dangers and unforeseen rewards of our most fundamental longings.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Leegant's slim first collection offers 10 sharply written stories about Jewish characters both young and old, secular and Orthodox, as they address questions of faith, love and change. In "How to Comfort the Sick and Dying," a yeshiva student struggling to leave behind his drug-dealing, womanizing ways is sent by his rabbi to visit a man dying of AIDS, but guilt about his past and his inability to comfort the dying man spark a crisis of faith. "Accounting" is the sad tale of an aging father and a willfully optimistic mother forced to face yet another betrayal by their handsome, profligate son: "Cleaning up after Eliot had become for them not only an act of penitence but an attempt to correct the balance, an effort to ensure that the world did not suffer a net loss on account of their son. For every debit inflicted by him they were obliged to provide, in the other column, a credit." In "Henny's Wedding," it is 1943, and a young bride stumbles through her wedding ceremony nearly incapacitated by morning sickness. Younger sister Shirley, far from being embarrassed or ashamed, vows to make daring choices of her own, and quickly finds herself in the arms of a charming cad-the groom's brother. The collection's heartwarming finale, "The Diviners of Desire: A Modern Fable," describes a different kind of courtship; set in Jerusalem, it pokes gentle fun at the labors of matchmakers. Throughout these stories, Leegant reveals herself to be an empathic, gifted creator of people and worlds. Thought-provoking and funny, touching and disturbing, this is an auspicious debut.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

From the aged Boston rabbi forced to consider the divine meaning of an earthly encounter to the American graduate student mining for religious connection in a Safed synagogue, Leegant populates her stories with Jews driven by spiritual yearning. And yet, fleshly longing comes through as more potent and more dangerous in these stories. In "Lucky in Love"--one of the most poignant examples in this collection of emotionally powerful stories--lovers separated by duty for 40 years finally come together but discover it may be too late. In "Henny's Wedding," a young girl witnesses her older sister suffer the consequences of an affair with a married man. "Is that what being swept up did to you?" the sister asks herself. "Took away your sense and made you helpless against its demands? Because if that were so, she, Shirley, would be its next willing partner." Leegant is as skillful at conveying a virgin's tingling sexual curiosity as she is at portraying an old man's grappling with the mystery of miracles. Karen Holt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (August 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039305439X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393054392
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,862,209 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joan Leegant began writing fiction at the age of forty. Her story collection, AN HOUR IN PARADISE, won the PEN/Winship Award for outstanding book by a New England author, the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and was a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Her novel, WHEREVER YOU GO, published in 2010, was named a Significant Jewish Book by the Union of Reform Judaism. Raised in Westbury, New York and a graduate of Harvard, Boston University Law School and the Vermont College MFA Program, Leegant practiced law for a decade before turning to fiction. Since 2007 she's lived half the year in Tel Aviv where she teaches at Bar-Ilan University. A night writer, Leegant does most of her work between the hours of 10 pm and 5 am. She and her husband have two sons, a boatbuilder and a filmmaker. For more about Joan Leegant and her work, visit: www.joanleegant.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Leegant's Paradise has Five-Star accomodations, November 15, 2003

By 

Ben Perlstein, age 13 (Acton, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Hour in Paradise: Stories (Hardcover)

When I read this collection I couldn't help but find myself in a world where I felt I played an individual role in the lives of the characters in each story. This world where the stories end much too soon but, each with its own independent soul, live on forever could only be created, in this stylish, witty manner by Joan Leegant. Her writing lifts itself off each page and lets us be the flies on the wall that we always dream of being when discovering a new author.

You will find yourself wrestling with the concepts of a Higher Power and what it puts before us in life and death. From the surprises and mysteries of love to belligerent foreign neighbors, each story of An Hour in Paradise shows us everything we need to know about perceiving past events in life and somehow leaves room to teach us how to learn from and cope with the teachings to come. I think we may expect great things from Joan Leegant, and, as a young reader, I think her writings have shown me a thing or two of what I might expect from myself.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars my time in paradise, October 4, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: An Hour in Paradise: Stories (Hardcover)

Real human emotions, sometimes set up in a magical way, sometimes in the most prosaic, are the subject of Joan Leegant's An Hour in Paradise. She is able to draw out our sympathies, our hopes, and even our disdain, for her characters, whether we like them or not. For example, I could feel for the poor schlepper who found himself lost in Sefad, even though I could not and probably will not ever like him or identify with him. I certainly did not like the Yeshiva student, but his difficulty is universal, although drawn in a narrow situation. A writer who can draw my emotions for a character I find dull, ordinary, or despicable, is doing her job, doing it very well indeed. I spent many hours in paradise reading and discussing An Hour in Paradise.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I found a treasure in Paradise!!!!!!!!, November 15, 2003

By 

Susan (Lexington, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Hour in Paradise: Stories (Hardcover)

This book is a real treasure!

I began each story in this collection with eager anticipation and was never disappointed. Each is a gem. Finding a new author you love is always exciting and this is an author to watch. The book is a great gift as well! I bought several!