In Sickness and In Health / Yom Kippur in a Gym - Two novellas by Nora Gold
A fiction review by Heather McBriarty
“These are two quietly powerful stories, intense, internal, and oh, so satisfying.”
In Sickness and In Health
Lily, felled by a mysterious, debilitating illness, tries to come to terms with the meaning of “normal”. As a child, she was labeled many things, none of them good, and certainly not normal. Her husband knows only some of the story. Shamed into silence, burying her past deeply, Lily’s need to hide the whole truth could destroy everything “normal” she has fought to achieve: her career, her family, her marriage. Her traitorous illness may expose everything she has tried to hide.
Yom Kippur in a Gym
Among hundreds gathered to celebrate Yom Kippur in a rented gym, five strangers are swept up in an emergency that will change their lives. Tom is a respected physician and representative of the schul, but he can’t get past the rejection of his own family. Rachel is the schul’s baker, faced with changing rules and an overwhelming worry she has not provided for this crowd when their fast is finally over. Ira, a lonely and ostracized student, new to Toronto, has decided tonight, after Yom Kippur is over, he will swallow the pile of pills waiting for him in his dorm room. Lucy’s 42-year-old husband has been given a devastating diagnosis, and the paperwork to figure out his “Advanced Care Directives”. Why can she not stop laughing? Ezra is a failure. He has wasted any chance of recognition for the art he is compelled to create, his copious talent unlauded, and is facing age with less than grace. Only a crisis can bring them together.
These are two quietly powerful stories, intense, internal, and oh, so satisfying. Gold’s characters are flawed, yet relatable, and vibrantly representative of the complexity and commonality of the human condition. She holds a mirror up to mankind, with love, compassion and humour, exposing her characters to themselves, and us to ourselves. Her prose is both beautiful and deeply evocative; whether a sickroom of a bedridden woman, or a crowded gym full of hungry and exhausted worshippers, the reader is instantly immersed in each deftly set scene. One does not read Gold’s words, rather you experience them, consume them like fine wine, slowly savouring each brilliant insight and carefully crafted, thought-provoking question she raises.What the author asks of us is to look around, to recognize the intricacy of people’s inner lives and to be empathetic, for while none of us are perfect, she reminds us, all of us have worth.
About the Author
Dr. Nora Gold is a prize-winning author, the editor of a prestigious literary journal jewishfiction.net, and a former professor, social worker, and activist. Her most recent book, the novel The Dead Man, was internationally praised, received a Translation Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, and was published in Hebrew. Her previous novel, Fields of Exile, won a Canadian Jewish Literary Award. Marrow and Other Stories won a Canadian Jewish Book Award and praise from Alice Munro.
About the Reviewer
Heather McBriarty is an author, lecturer and Medical Radiation Technologist based in Saint John, NB. Her love of reading and books began early in life, as did her love of writing, but the discovery of old family correspondence led to her first non-fiction book, Somewhere in Flanders: Letters from the Front, and a passion for the First World War. She has delivered lectures to the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society, NB Genealogy Society, and Western Front Association (Central Ontario Branch), among others, on the war. Heather’s first novel of the “Great War”, Amid the Splintered Trees, was launched in November 2021.
Book Details
Publisher : Guernica Editions (March 1 2024)
Language : English
Paperback : 200 pages
ISBN-10 : 1771838655
ISBN-13 : 978-1771838658