Review by Booklist Review
A narrator far from home spies on her young granddaughters from across the street. She's never met them; the girls' mother, Leah, also the woman's only child, hasn't even told her they exist. How our narrator, Yoella, arrived at this moment is the project of Israeli book editor and author Blum's second novel, a best-seller and prize-winner in the author's home country. Yoella encircles her rupture with Leah, reaching from her own childhood to Leah's, her joyful experiences of mothering to mental health crises, her love affair with Leah's father to his early death. The thread tightens only to suddenly find more slack; Yoella can't seem to figure out what happened any sooner than we readers can, and this becomes the other project of Blum's novel and Yoella's propulsive, painful story: how do we love fully and yet fail at loving? For all its uncanny unanswerability, this is a firmly earthbound, often beautiful, and wholly soul-stirring contemplation of parental love and the effortful, lifelong desire to see beyond the gauze of our own perceptions.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Israeli writer Blum's moving English-language debut, an Israeli woman named Yoella contends with her estrangement from her daughter, Leah, who left home at 18. A painful scene sets the stage, with an older Yoella standing on a street in contemporary Groningen, in the Netherlands, surreptitiously peeping through the windows of Leah's house to see her two granddaughters, ages six and five, for the first time. Yoella then recounts meeting an older professor named Meir Driman when she was 30. She tells him about her father's death when she was a teenager and her episodes of depression, and soon the two become romantically involved and have Leah. She's much loved by both of her parents, but Meir sometimes thinks Yoella doesn't give Leah enough space to grow on her own and gain independence. Yoella in turn fears Meir will leave them after he has a short-lived affair with a student. In high school, Leah falls in love with a classmate who rejects her, setting off a cascade of misunderstandings that lead to disaster. Blum builds a great deal of suspense over what caused Leah to flee, and she creates a realistic portrayal of the joys, sorrows, and uncertainties of motherhood. This one hits hard. Agent: Deborah Harris, Deborah Harris Agency. (July)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Why has an adored child abandoned her parents' home, lied about her whereabouts, and concealed her new family? Israeli writer Blum's brief, sometimes stiflingly close-focus new novel opens with Yoella Linden secretly watching her daughter Leah's family from the outside, through a window. Leah walked out of her parents' home in Israel at age 18 and pretended she was traveling the world; in fact, she had settled in Groningen, Holland, married, and become a mother herself, to two daughters. In a cool narrative voice, Yoella takes her time to unpack the mystery of Leah's disappearance, interleaving memories of the girl's childhood with glimpses of her own marriage, references to the mother-daughter fiction she has read, and episodes depicting her mental fragility. Yoella has been seeing a psychiatrist for 16 years to help her deal with intermittent depression that began at age 9. Leah's childhood is conveyed in intimate domestic scenes, often filled with reciprocated feelings across the years. Despite occasional power struggles and discord, Leah was "one of those girls who was endlessly loved by their parents…the love of our lives." But around the edges of this familial norm, we learn about more troubling aspects of Yoella's marriage to Meir: his occasional affairs; his love for Leah but opposition to having further children, leading to abortions. And slowly another narrative takes center stage--Yoella's response to a crisis of Leah's making, leading to collusion and manipulation and a devastating outcome. Bit by bit Blum's novel reveals itself to be a dissection of misapplied maternal love in one particular instance, in which emotions and impulses contradict themselves and turn inside out. Part detective story, part morality tale, this is a disturbing story of being damaged and damaging. A deft, claustrophobic tale that takes the shine off motherhood's halo while sideswiping men, too. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
