Suicide, Jews and Savannah

What I've been reading: 

The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes:  At first, Barnes' slim, Booker-prize winning novel seems like a thematic rumination on memory, nostalgia and personal history.  The  narrator, Tony--captured with equal precision in youth and age--looks back on his life and recounts the story of his first love, Veronica, consistently spiraling back to the same set of uncertain memories.  After an odd weekend with Veronica's family and a subsequent break-up, Veronica ends up dating Tony's boyhood friend, Adrian, much to Tony's childish dismay.  Adrian later commits suicide, but the reader is unclear why until the very last page of the book--brilliantly, at the exact same time Tony understands the weight of what happened 40 years earlier.  As the reader gets enmeshed in Tony's churning psyche, and as Tony uncovers more and more information, the narrative darkens with intrigue, but remains faithful to its initial thematic focus.  Keep at this book; the ending is worth it.

What We Talk About When We Talk about Anne Frank, by Nathan Englander:  Englander's latest book of short stories came out the same week as his modern Haggadah (compiled with Jonathon Safran Foer), and it's hard to say which text is more Jewish.  The stories are diverse, but all come back to an enduring Jewish backdrop: antisemitism on Long Island, settlers in war-torn Israel, drug-induced recreations of the Holocaust.  The stories are dark and complex, but infiltrated with bits of humor and compassion.   My favorite of the eight told the story of a secular Jewish man who finds himself in a seedy Manhattan peep show before returning home to his suburban family.  As he battles between guilt and desire, the women in the show morph into his family members and finally his boyhood rabbi, and the readers gets sucked deep into his neurotic fantasy. Though inconsistent in quality, the stories merge Jewish history and modern Judaism in inventive, surprising ways that definitely warrant a read.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt: This book was the perfect companion for a recent trip to South Carolina.  During a weekend in Savannah, GA, New York editor, Berendt, falls in love with this sleepy Southern city and takes up semi-residency.  As a trained journalist, Berendt begins poking around, asking questions, meeting people and learning about the city's complex social network, twisted inner workings, racist history, long-standing grudges and sultry underbelly. Although the book centers on a drawn-out murder mystery, its real focus is the amazing cast of characters Berendt meets while living in Savannah.  Through rich and evocative language, Berendt introduces readers to a drug-addled gigolo, a fly-keeper in possession of a deadly poison, a voodoo princess, a sexy black drag queen and the seedy founder of the historic preservation society.  This book is hilarious and dramatic, and one of the few non-fiction books I've had a hard time putting down.