Ebook201 pages3 hours
How This Night Is Different: Stories
By Elisa Albert
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
Elisa Albert's debut story collection marks the arrival of an extraordinary new voice in fiction. In How This Night Is Different, Albert boldly illuminates the struggles of young, disaffected Jews to find spiritual fulfillment. With wit and wisdom, she confronts themes -- self-deprecation, stressful family relationships, sex, mortality -- that have been hallmarks of her literary predecessors. But Albert brings a decidedly fresh, iconoclastic, twenty-first-century attitude to the table.
Holidays, gatherings, and rites of passage provide the backdrop for these ten provocative stories. The characters who populate How This Night Is Different are ambivalent, jaded, and in serious want of connection. As they go through the motions of familial duty and religious observance, they find themselves continually longing for more. In prose that is by turns hilarious and harrowing, Albert details the quest for acceptance, a happier view of the past, and above all the possibility of a future.
From the hormonally charged concentration camp teen tour in "The Living" to the sexually frustrated young mother who regresses to bat mitzvah-aged antics in "Everything But," and culminating with the powerful and uproariously apropos finale of "Etta or Bessie or Dora or Rose," How This Night Is Different is sure to titillate, charm, and profoundly resonate with anyone who's ever felt conflicted about his or her faith, culture, or place in the world.
Holidays, gatherings, and rites of passage provide the backdrop for these ten provocative stories. The characters who populate How This Night Is Different are ambivalent, jaded, and in serious want of connection. As they go through the motions of familial duty and religious observance, they find themselves continually longing for more. In prose that is by turns hilarious and harrowing, Albert details the quest for acceptance, a happier view of the past, and above all the possibility of a future.
From the hormonally charged concentration camp teen tour in "The Living" to the sexually frustrated young mother who regresses to bat mitzvah-aged antics in "Everything But," and culminating with the powerful and uproariously apropos finale of "Etta or Bessie or Dora or Rose," How This Night Is Different is sure to titillate, charm, and profoundly resonate with anyone who's ever felt conflicted about his or her faith, culture, or place in the world.
Author
Elisa Albert
Elisa Albert is the author of After Birth, The Book of Dahlia, How This Night Is Different, and editor of the anthology Freud’s Blind Spot. Her stories and essays have appeared in Time, The Guardian, The New York Times, n+1, Bennington Review, Tin House, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She lives in upstate New York.
Read more from Elisa Albert
After Birth: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Dahlia: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Human Blues: A Novel Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Freud's Blind Spot: 23 Original Essays on Cherished, Estranged, Lost, Hurtful, Hopeful, Complicated Siblings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for How This Night Is Different
Rating: 3.55 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
20 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5She has talent, but doesn't like any of her characters very much.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elisa Albert is an observant and cuttingly witty writer who can see into the black hearts of young suburban Jewish women. She sees them at Passover, sharing a new non-Jewish boyfriend and a killingly itchy yeast infection. She finds them at Auschwitz, on a teen tour called We The Living. She finds them at an abortion clinic. She finds them in herself.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Be forewarned! This book contains irreverant responses to things typically Jewish. Don't read it if you are easily offended. What this book does extremely well, however, is take someone's pain and superimpose it on a Jewish situation, thereby making very poignant statements in the way each situation is played out. Superficially funny, but deeply sad, these stories are unique and thought-provoking reads. When I first started this collection of stories, I didn't think I'd like them. As I read through them, though, they began to grow on me. I have to say that, by the time I finished this book, I had to admit I found the stories very entertaining. "Etta or Bessie or Dora or Rose" was the most powerful, but my two personal favorites were "When You Say You're A Jew" and "So Long" because they echoed my personal experiences. I will certainly recommend this book to others.
Book preview
How This Night Is Different - Elisa Albert
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