Monday's Reviews Today: Merrill's The Story of Forgetting and Bernstien's The Dream: A Memoir
-- Publishers Weekly, 2/1/2008 6:37:00 AM
Dreams of different kinds power both of this week's books. Novelist Stefan Merrill Block's "astounding debut," The Story of Forgetting, interweaves the lives of two very different people--a teenage science nerd bent on discovering the cause of his mother's mental breakdown, and "an aging recluse roiled by memories of his one true love"--as they try to unravel their coiled lives while partaking of the same fantasy world: a place called Isidora. Harry Bernstein's new book, The Dream: A memoir records a dream pursued, as the author recalls his teenage years, during which his Jewish immigrint family chased a better life from England to Chicago to New York, while Berstein "confounds Midwestern types with his Lancashire accent."
The Story of Forgetting
Stefan Merrill Block. Random, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6679-7
Told from two perspectives that are at once nearly polar and intimately linked, this astounding debut captures an air of the fantastical while presenting one family’s heartfelt battle with Alzheimer’s. Seth Waller is a 15-year-old Austin, Tex., science nerd determined to discover the reason behind his mother’s recent mental breakdown. Abel Haggard, living on his family farm just past the Dallas suburbs, is an aging recluse roiled by memories of his one true love: Mae, his brother Paul’s wife. The two had a torrid affair while Paul served in Korea, forcing Mae to conceal the paternity of her baby when she became pregnant. Both Seth and Abel speak of a fantasy land named Isidora, which exists outside of our physical world, but which becomes a common thread in piecing this delicately woven story together. Each character is a product of a different time and place, but as Seth delves deeper into his scientific investigation and Abel’s troubled life is further revealed, the two stories meet in an emotional and memorable climax. Block displays an innate gift for developing believable characters each with his own distinct voice. The result is a story that’s compulsive and transporting. (Apr.)
The Dream: A Memoir
Harry Bernstein. Ballantine, $24 (304p) ISBN 978-0-345-50374-9
Having mined his English upbringing in The Invisible Wall, Bernstein resumes a nine-decade reckoning in this gently observed memoir of a Jewish immigrant family riven from within. Eager to escape English mill town life, his mother promises her brood a better life in America—a dream providentially fulfilled with steamship tickets. But even after reuniting with family in Chicago, his father’s “bloody ’ell” bellows and monstrous rage continue to smite. The author takes in his new surroundings with a keen adolescent eye, observing “back porches all piled on top of one another like egg crates,” belying celluloid America—as do his ragamuffin elders, with his grandfather reduced to begging in secret. At school he confounds Midwestern types with his Lancashire accent, comically mistaken for an Egyptian named “Arry.” Engulfed in the Roaring ’20s, the Bernsteins revel in the luxuries of telephones and parlor rooms, only to feel the wallop of the Depression as the decade wanes. Uprooted to New York, Bernstein ekes out a living and falls quietly, desperately in love, achieving a joyful 67-year marriage. Coming on the heels of his first book, this one will delight readers eager for more of Bernstein’s distinctive voice and gift for character. (Apr.)
