Review by New York Times Review
THE UNSEEN WORLD, by Liz Moore. (Norton, $15.95.) The daughter of a brilliant computer scientist deciphers the mysteries of his life in Moore's novel. Ada was home-schooled by her father, joining him in his laboratory as he worked to develop natural language processing for computers. When he begins to exhibit signs of dementia, she spends the next decades of her life deciphering the coded message he gave to her, revealing secrets about his history. THE WAY TO THE SPRING: Life and Death in Palestine, by Ben Ehrenreich. (Penguin, $18.) Over three years in the West Bank, Ehrenreich lived with Palestinian families and reported on daily life for publications including The New York Times Magazine. In a series of character sketches of the people he encountered from Hebron to Ramallah, his book offers particular insight into life under occupation. HOT MILK, by Deborah Levy. (Bloomsbury, $16.) Sofia - a deeply unreliable, underemployed anthropologist and the heroine of this novel - follows her hypochondriac mother to a dubious health center in Spain. "The book exerts a seductive, arcane power, rather like a deck of tarot cards, every page seething with lavish, cryptic innuendo," our reviewer, Leah Hager Cohen, wrote. "Levy has spun a web of violent beauty and poetical ennui." EAST WEST STREET: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity," by Philippe Sands. (Vintage, $19.) These concepts form the core of the international justice system, and Sands investigates the two men responsible for bringing them to light. Our reviewer, Bernard-Henri Levy, called the account a narrative "in which the reader observes the life and work of two ordinary men drawn by unwavering passion and driven very nearly insane by the griefs and the hopes bequeathed to each of them." LONER, by Teddy Wayne. (Simon & Schuster, $16.) At Harvard, David Federman, a painfully unpopular and anonymous freshman, becomes obsessed with a beautiful, wealthy classmate whose indifference seems only to spur him further. Class, power and privilege are at the forefront of Wayne's novel, as David pursues his love interest with increasing, unsettling urgency. I'M SUPPOSED TO PROTECT YOU FROM ALL THIS: A Memoir, by Nadja Spiegelman. (Riverhead, $16.) Spiegelman explores four generations of women in her family in this account, which grew out of interviews she conducted with her mother, Françoise Mouly, the art director of The New Yorker. She borrows tactics from her father, Art Spiegelman, who documented his family's experience with the Holocaust in his graphic novel "Maus."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 29, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
The title's spring in question, used by Palestinian farmers for longer than anyone could remember, bubbled from a low stone cliff below the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. In 2008, Israeli settlers constructed a pool to collect the water, then stocked it with fish and added a bench, a swing, and more pools. The Palestinian villagers marched in opposition, not just to the spring's transformation, but also to larger issues they associated with Israel: the checkpoints, travel restrictions, land appropriations, walls and fences, home demolitions, and so on. Ehrenreich obviously sides with the Palestinians, particularly the young protesters, as he shares the exacting daily life he observed during the three years he lived, off and on, in the West Bank. If Sandy Tolan's Children of the Stone (2015), about young Palestinian musicians navigating the Israeli occupation, hinted at hope, Ehrenreich's journal conveys how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict truly plays out at ground level, where normal might include the sounds of screaming, being arrested and questioned for hours, or simply being shot at.--Moores, Alan Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Teeming with heartbreak, irony, and intimate moments of joy, this first nonfiction book from journalist and novelist Ehrenreich (Ether) germinated from his 2013 New York Times Magazine cover story entitled (more provocatively) "Is This Where the Third Intifada Will Start?" For readers perplexed by the Israel-Palestine conflict, he intersperses his story with crash-course history lessons. But the author's real project is to humanize ordinary Palestinians for Americans, capturing the humiliations and indignities-bureaucratic, psychological, and physical-that they suffer under occupation; their fear, anger, and frustration; and their families and celebrations. He paints a vivid portrait of life in three locations: the village of Nabi Saleh, where families have been protesting weekly for the right to use a spring that was theirs until Israeli settlers claimed it, and are consistently met with force; the city of Hebron, a puzzle box of checkpoints and segregated zones, and a powder keg of Jewish and Palestinian resentments; and the village of Umm al-Kheir, where a way of life is quietly dying in the shadow of ever-expanding settlements. With a journalist's keen eye for detail and a novelist's ardor for language and its ability to move people, Ehrenreich will incite renewed compassion in his readers. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins Loomis Agency. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A devastating portrait of unending turbulence in Palestine.From 2011 to 2014, journalist and novelist Ehrenreich (Ether, 2011, etc.) lived for several extended periods in the West Bank, observing, questioning, and interacting with residents. In a region inflamed by "intractable" oppression and violence, the author aims to tell stories "about resistance, and about people who resist. My concern is with what keeps people going when everything appears to be lost." Acknowledging that objectivity is impossible, Ehrenreich hopes to achieve "something more modesttruth." Revealing truth, though, is hardly a modest goal in a place where contested truths erupt in death and destruction. "There were greater and lesser sorrows," writes the author, "but sorrow was a given. So was the pain of humiliation, the hard pride of refusal, a certain rage." In Nabi Saleh, Hebron, Ramallah, and other towns, the author focuses on individuals engaged in protest and grass-roots resistance efforts against Israel's "almost complete control over the Palestinian economy," settlers' determination to take over land, arbitrary rules and controls, and a pervasive atmosphere of fear. Israeli soldiers attack Palestinians with rubber bullets, Molotov cocktails, a fetid spray, and tear gas; settlers throw acid and urine; residents counter with bricks, stones, and rockets that the author characterizes as "unnerving" but, he insists, incapable of causing damage. Hebron struck the author as the most horrific: where it was normal to hear screams from soldiers' beatings; where each day schoolchildren were fired on with tear gas; where people were arrested and detained as "a warning"; where streets were laden with "trash, bottles, bricks, and concrete blocks." Ehrenreich has no faith in American-led peace talks and castigates Benjamin Netanyahu for "near-constant deception, insult, and bad faith" and for fomenting "fear and rage." Although Ehrenreich feels optimistic about the determination of Palestinians to resist, this visceral book, sorrowfully, portends no end to the horror. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
