SHINY NEW BOOKS THAT MAKE
GREAT GIFTS FOR THE HOLIDAY
LIZ SPIKOL | JE STAFF
There are so many good books out
right now, and coming out in the
next few months, that it’s almost
impossible to pick just a few —
especially with so many fantastically
talented Jewish authors.

The Heavy Hitters
Some of the biggest names in contemporary
fiction — both in the U.S. and in Israel —
have new books out all at the same time, only
one of which is in paperback. That’s OK,
though: Hardbacks make better gifts anyway.

Easier to wrap.

Start with the latest from Jonathan Lethem
(Motherless Brooklyn; Fortress of Solitude),
whose new book, A Gambler’s Anatomy: A
Novel, tells the suspenseful story of Bruno
Alexander, a backgammon hustler who travels
the world from Berlin to Berkeley with his
parasitic manager. Vogue called the novel
“delightfully weird,” which is sort of Lethem’s
M.O., while the Chicago Tribune described it as
a “strange and wondrous” act of channeling
Thomas Pynchon and Ian Fleming.

If you want to get more serious, try the
newest from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael
Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier
and Clay; The Yiddish Policemen’s Union).

Moonglow: A Novel is based on an experience
from Chabon’s own life, when he visited his
grandfather on his deathbed in Pittsburgh.

Here, the unnamed grandson hears stories of
his grandfather’s life, from early 20th-century
Jewish South Philly to a penal colony in upstate
New York to a retirement home in Florida.

Obsessed with spaceships, World War II and
postwar, posttraumatic survival, Moonglow
was named by Amazon Best Book of
November 2016, whose reviewer called it “an
intensely personal story uplifted by the shifting
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WINTER HOLIDAY MAGAZINE
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



tectonic plates of truth and memory.”
Chabon will be at the Philadelphia Free
Library’s main branch to read from
Moonglow in December.

While Chabon’s book reflects on Jewish
biography, it’s not nearly as marinated in the
Jewish experience as Here I Am, the latest by
Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is
Illuminated; Extremely Loud & Incredibly
Close), whose very title references the story
of Abraham and Isaac in the book of
Genesis. The doorstop-length novel, now
out in paperback, tells the story of a Jewish
family in crisis, and the way their Jewish
identity, religious beliefs and connection
with Israel informs their lives. Author Lev
Grossman, writing for Time, compared Here
I Am to Middlemarch, while other critics
have likened the author to Roth,
Bellow and Malumud.

As Safran Foer
reflects on the Amer-
ican Jewish responsi-
bility toward Israel,
one of the Jewish
state’s most impor-
— VOGUE
tant writers, Amos
Oz, has just pub-
lished his own new
novel, Judas — his first full-length work
since A Tale of Love and Darkness. The
novel, which centers on three misfits living
in a mysterious old house in Jerusalem in
1959, serves as an allegory, of sorts, for the
evolution of the state of Israel, and offers a
new spin on the biblical story of Judas.

“One of the most triumphant novels of his
career,” said the Forward.

Along with Oz, the famed Israeli author
of the novel A Pigeon and a Boy also has
new work out. In his latest translated work
of fiction, Two She-Bears: A Novel, Meir
Shalev writes of a schoolteacher in pres-
ent-day Israel who’s trying to unravel a
mystery that took place on a moshava in
1930, in early British Palestine. According
to official accounts, three farmers commit-
ted suicide in the same year. But were they
all suicides, really? What is the truth about
these men living in rural Israel? Elaine
Margolin, writing in the Jerusalem Post,
called Two She-Bears “a masterful work
that explores with great insight the myster-
ies that surround male closeness.”
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“delightfully weird”
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HOLIDAY GIFT ITEMS FOR EVERYONE ON YOUR LIST...

...we have a Baby Boutique too!
The Graphic Thinkers
There was a time, before Art Spiegelman
came along, when people thought
graphic novels were just collected comic
strips: frivolous and light. Then
Spiegelman wrote Maus, about the
See Books, Page 24
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