Most of us have grappled with the role of religion in our lives and have strived to reconcile our temporal desires with the soul's higher yearnings. Colin Stone, the hero of Cameron Stracher's debut novel, The Laws of Return experiences such a struggle as a third-generation American and secular Jew who lives in a world cast loose from spiritual moorings.
Colin grows up in the wealthy suburbs of New York, where he attends Hebrew school and has a Bar Mitzvah but is never truly touched by his religion. Embarking on a personal journey toward faith, he first finds himself in the Protestant hills of western Massachusetts. Later his search takes him to the hallowed halls of Harvard Law School and finally on an odyssey to the Arctic Circle.
But what Colin seeks turns out to be closer to home. He falls in love with a woman who celebrates the irrational, including doing everything in counts of threes. Ultimately, in a final confrontation with an unrepentant bigot, Colin discovers a truth that the laws of science and society cannot explain.
The Laws of Return brings home the ambivalence and confusion many of us have experienced regarding how religion and spirituality fit into our lives. As Meg Wolitzer puts it, "The author writes wonderfully about faith and identity, and readers will be reminded of Philip Roth's early work, as well as delighted by Cameron Stracher's own fresh and uncompromising vision."
Written with wry wit and humor, Laws of Return marks Cameron Stracher's impressive debut.
The existential angst of assimilated Jews in America is the theme of Stracher's fiercely honest, caustically funny and ironic first novel. Blond, blue-eyed Colin Stone ("my name sounds like an intestinal disorder") grows up in suburbia, the grandson of Holocaust-haunted, Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants and the son of a scientist father and a mother who pursues a Ph.D in comparative literature while raising three children. Determined to join the American melting pot, Colin's parents have shed their religion and traditions, unwittingly casting their children into a spiritual void. At the same time, they send conflicting messages: to assuage their guilt, Colin is forced to attend Hebrew school to prepare for a bar mitzvah. Obsessed by the sense of a tragic history but denying that he is part of it, Colin develops friendships with other spiritual and cultural misfits, participating in encounters that often verge on the farcical but capture the tension of secular Jews walking the tightrope between assimilation and isolation. Stracher has a sharp, irreverent eye for the hypocrisies and contradictions of his protagonist's life, which he describes in prose that snaps with staccato one-liners and resonates with insight. He follows Colin's belated coming of age through a series of unfortunate relationships with unattainable women (a set piece on Colin's first date is hilarious), college in New England (transparently Amherst) and Harvard Law School, followed by virtual bondage in a white-shoe Manhattan law firm where Colin hides his religious background from the anti-Semitic boss. It's not until his endearingly neurotic non-Jewish girlfriend accuses him of being "filled with self-hatred" that Colin can move from passivity to affirmation, cast off his ambiguous identity and declare that he is a Jew. In Colin's insistently mocking voice, Stracher writes first-class social comedy. Author tour. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
You don't have to be Jewish to appreciate this impressive debut novel, but it helps. Rich in religious allusion and Hebrew phraseology, Stracher's foray into territory mapped out by Philip Roth and Woody Allen captures the American Jewish experience with warmth and savage wit. Colin Stone, a secular Jew in search of his lost faith, traverses each of the life stages outlined in the Bible: "bondage under a cruel master, a hasty freedom, worship of false idols, forty years of wandering, the Promised Land." It's a delightful tale and deeply philosophical, peopled with quirky characters (like the yarmulke-wearing childhood friend of Colin whose hero happens to be Hitler), and Stracher tells it in a spare and original style. Highly recommended.?David Sowd, formerly with Stark Cty. Dist. Lib., Canton, Ohio Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Cameron Stracher was born and raised in Roslyn, Long Island. At a young age, he wanted to be a writer, and had his first play produced while an undergraduate at Amherst College. After college, he retreated to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where he tried write the Great American Novel. Failing miserably, he enrolled at Harvard Law School, where he still managed to take a writing workshop from Mary Robison at Harvard College. He returned to Woods Hole after earning his J.D. degree, and was the only waiter at the Coonamessett Inn who was also admitted to the New York State bar. Finally, succumbing to parental and financial pressure, he got a real job at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., where he lasted for one year before fleeing for the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
He spent four years in Iowa City, studying under Frank Conroy, James Salter, Marilynne Robinson, Meg Wolitzer, and Deborah Eisenberg. More important, he met his wife, Christine Pakkala, a poet, while she was serving cheese samples at the food co-op. After Christine graduated, the couple moved to New York City where Cameron practiced law at Friedman & Kaplan, and then became in-house counsel at CBS, handling libel, privacy, copyright and other claims for the network. One of the highlights of his career during those years was getting Dan Rather out of jury duty.
Cameron won a fiction fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 1994, and his first novel, The Laws of Return, was published by William Morrow in 1996. His non-fiction account of his life as a law firm associate, Double Billing: A Young Lawyer's Tale of Greed, Sex, Lies, and a Swivel Chair, was also published by Morrow in 1998. He left CBS in 1999 and joined the media law firm Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, where he became partner and helped open the New York office. In 2001, he began teaching at New York Law School, and eventually became the Publisher of the Law Review and the Co-Director of the school's new Program in Law & Journalism. His second book of non-fiction, Dinner with Dad: How I Found My Way Back to the Family Table, was published by Random House in 2007. This summer Cameron left New York Law School to spend more time writing and with his family.
At present, he is Of Counsel to Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, and has his own private practice where he counsels media clients like Hybrid Films, producer of the hit TV series Dog the Bounty Hunter, and Al Roker Entertainment, on newsgathering and publishing risks. He also handles all pre-publication review for Star magazine and all litigation for other American Media publications.
In addition to his books, Cameron has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The American Lawyer (where he is a contributing editor), and many other publications. He is an avid runner, and is currently working on a book about the running boom and the 1970s for Random House, as well as on a comic novel in progress, The Socratic Method, based on his years teaching law. You can read The Socratic Method in progress at www.rateyourlawprofessor.com. He lives in Westport, Connecticut, with his wife and two children, Simon and Lulu, for whom he wrote his YA debut novel, The Water Wars.
5.0 out of 5 starsA VERY MOVING STORY THAT DESERVES NOTICE!, December 31, 1996
By A Customer
This review is from: The Laws of Return: A Novel (Hardcover)
THE LAWS OF RETURN is a beautifully crafted first novel that captures the reader from the first paragraph. Colin Stone, the novel's protagonist, tells the story of his life from infancy to what appears to be his early thirties and the result is a story that is as emotionally powerful as anything I have read in recent years. The author's "minimalist" style and use of the first person and present tense expertly draws the reader into Colin's world; a world filled with uncertainties, anxieties and doubts. I particularly enjoyed the deadpan irony sprinkled throughout and found myself laughing frequently. At the same time, there is an underlying pathos in many of the pages that adds substance to the book and makes it much more than simply a series of humorous vignettes. This lyrical book is intelligently written and I strongly recommend it to everyone
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This review is from: The Laws of Return: A Novel (Hardcover)
This book was a blast, funny from the first page on through. Yet, it is also a thoughtful and moving story that helps one reflect on questions of assimilation. The writing is very graceful and elegant. I can't praise it enough. D. London.
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This review is from: The Laws of Return: A Novel (Hardcover)
Cast loose from spiritual moorings, a third-generation American and secular Jew, Colin Stonegrows up in the suburbs of New York, attends Hebrew school, is bar-mitzvahed, but never touched by his religion. Written in the first person and present tense, just helps to pull you into the story. Extremely well written and captivating.
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