From Publishers Weekly
A second collection of powerful stories by Papernick (The Ascent of Eli Israel) pursues the conflicted inner turmoil of Jews caught in a modern maelstrom. The chilling title story, set during Purim in a New York City Jewish school, pits a well-meaning, beleaguered young teacher against one of his disaffected charges, the angry half-Haitian Junius Barker, who comes to class dressed as a suicide-bombing prophet Mohammed and challenges the teacher to explain why the Jews are the chosen people. In "A Kiss for Mrs. Fisch," a 40-year-old businessman on his first trip to Israel and his first time away from his mother, decides to get a wife, but finds himself swimming uncomfortably between American materialism and ritualistic Judaism. In "The Madonna of Temple Beth Elohim," a shell-shocked Iraqi war victim offered work at a Boston-area synagogue believes he sees the imprint of the Madonna in a pulpit, setting off a firestorm between Christian pilgrims and bewildered Jews. And in "The Last Five-Year Plan," the millionaire developer protagonist hits on a brilliant idea to establish accord between Israelis and Palestinians: he'll introduce them to baseball. Papernick's new collection is tight and fearless.
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Review
Comparisons have aptly been made with Nathan Englander and Bernard Malamud. Papernick is nothing if not a literary iconoclast keen on exploding our ideals, ideals and conceptions about ourselves and others. --Canadian Jewish News, May 2010
Surprising, shocking, profane and hilarious . One of the most startlingly brilliant story collections I've read in years. --Caroline Leavittville, June 14, 2010
Edgy...difficult...Papernick disconcerts and surprises. His confrontation with Judaism, with the whole question of what Jewishness means, is one of the most original I've read in a long time. -- Na'amat Woman Magazine:
Papernick's fiction takes no prisoners...grab(s) our attention and keep us glued to the page... Sometimes, darkness falls, sometimes transcendence lifts, but... tenderness always lurks just around the edges... unforgettable. --Hadassah Magazine
Papernick moves with ease around history, high culture and pop culture... Such high-low humor is the hallmark of Papernick's style, which is characterized by unadorned prose and a casualness that belies its sophistication. --The Jewish Daily Forward
"Papernick’s penetrating, clear-sighted stories ring true." —New York Times Book Review
"It is Papernick’s sense of the surreal, his dark humor and his consciousness of the deep roots of Jewish and Muslim culture that distinguish this collection." —Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)
"An utterly original writer—one who doesn't rely on gimmicks, but rather on amazingly real characters and consistently page-turning plots." —Dara Horn, author, In the Image
