Fields of Exile

After a decade spent as a left-wing peace activist in Israel, Judith Gallanter returns to her native Canada to fulfill a promise to her dying father that she will complete her graduate studies, in Gold’s debut novel (following the collection Marrow and Other Stories). She finds the Dunhill School of Social Work a nest of backstabbing, second-rate academics, and anti-Semitism that hides behind a facade of anti-Zionism in the supposedly open-minded community. Judith feels trapped in a Canada that is hostile to Zionists like herself, and she becomes a marginalized pariah at Dunhill, where political tensions are gradually escalating to the point of violence. Unfortunately, the weak link in this story is Judith herself: she is never particularly believable as the starry-eyed idealist of the left we are told she is, and her conversion to a more hard-line position is therefore unconvincing. This subject matter demands a great novel, but sadly Gold’s novel is not great. (May)