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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetry, truth and life, November 18, 2001
I read Naomi Ragen's weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post religiously. But I could not understand when she said this was what she had lived her whole life to write. Then I read the book.This autobiographical novel of family resilience distills many truths that obviously took a lifetime to learn--truths that melt bitterness. The book weaves several layers together--a of a family's travails, its near ruin in a tangle of poverty, bad decisions and relationships gone sour; a soul's awakening; and family renewal. The poetry of all three resonates throughout in a voice as subtle and profound as it is sensible. Ragen has given few details when she notes that readers will all feel sure that their "own knowledge would have kept you safe," and then warns, "Of course, you'd be fooling yourself." Poetry comes in what follows: "It is a false security, that feeling of superiority we have listening to someone else recount the steps to personal disaster because all of us are so very similar--we humans. We feel safe only because the teller is untalented, the truth unconveyed. And so, you must consider the soft building dust underfoot, the newness of the place." One can only relish Ragen's description, some time later, of a child discovering the value of her own life. "She dropped to her knees, breathless, aware of her own heart pounding like some stranger begging to be let in.... She lay down in the sand. First she wiggled her toes, feeling the air pass through them like the cold touch of metal. She felt a strong sudden consciousness of her ankles and the firm muscles of her calves, the long wonderful stretch of skin, so smooth and soft, that ran from her toes to her hips. She felt aware of her stomach and the softly beating heart in her chest and her mouth and her nose and eyes and ears. "A nameless joy began to rise inside her, wavelike. She felt it spread, as a wave of breaks and spreads, touching the far-off shore, flooding the sand in a quick deliberate flood. A sudden searing light, like the sun, pierced what had been dark and cold and filled with fear. " 'I'm alive!' she thought, and was comforted." Have we not all been in that place? The same child still later astonishes herself and readers with her discovery of her soul and place in the universe. The sense of discovery alone makes this wise novel worth reading. But the book also rewards readers with intense optimism, even when its characters are at their lowest. With the same poetry that the book opens, it closes: "The echoes moved out of the corners, beating like wingless birds around the room." I cannot recommend this book or author highly enough. Alyssa A. Lappen
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