Spinning at the Edges

Poliner (As Close to Us as Breathing) offers a cluttered but affecting story of a Jewish family’s flight from German-occupied Amsterdam to the U.S., and their inherited trauma decades later. The reader meets Ruth and Sophia Jacobsen, 14 and 16, respectively, in 1941, shortly before the latter dies in tragic circumstances that are revealed later. The family then flees from Amsterdam to Lisbon before settling in Connecticut. In 2000, Ruth’s daughter, Stephanie, 39, cannot break through the emotional wall her mother has constructed to deal with Sophia’s death. Things take a turn after Ruth, who lives in isolation near a lake, helps rescue 16-year-old Ian Lima when he attempts suicide by jumping into a hole in the ice. The great number of secondary characters and side stories—a property dispute, a judge getting served with allegations of misconduct by a thwarted lover, addiction in the Lima family—sap momentum, but the icy scene on the lake gains resonance as Ruth reflects on her childhood spent ice-skating with Sophia, and Poliner’s character work is top-notch, particularly in her exploration of Ruth’s melancholy and reticence (“it was chance, the forces that shaped so much of your fate”). This will stay with readers. (May)