The UnAmericans: Stories [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition] Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00HWDFUIA | Format: PDF, EPUB
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The UnAmericans, a stunning exploration of characters shaped by the forces of history, is the debut work of fiction by Molly Antopol, a 2013 National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree.
An absentee father, a former dissident from communist-era Prague, needles his adult daughter for details about her newly commissioned play when he fears it will cast him in an unflattering light. An actor, imprisoned during the Red Scare for playing up his communist leanings to get a part with a leftist film director, is shamed by his act when he reunites with his precocious young son. An Israeli soldier, forced to defend a settlement filled with American religious families, still pines for a chance to discover the United States for himself. A young Israeli journalist, left unemployed after America?s most recent economic crash, questions her life path when she begins dating a middle-aged widower still in mourning for his wife. And in the book?s final story, a tour de force spanning three continents and three generations of women, a young American and her Israeli husband are forced to reconsider their marriage after the death of her dissident art-collecting grandmother.
Again and again, Molly Antopol?s deeply sympathetic characters struggle for footing in an uncertain world, hounded by forces beyond their control. Their voices are intimate and powerful and they resonate with searing beauty. Antopol is a superb young talent, and The UnAmericans will long be remembered for its wit, humanity, and heart.
Books with free ebook downloads available Download The UnAmericans: Stories [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition]
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 7 hours and 52 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Audible Studios
- Audible.com Release Date: February 3, 2014
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00HWDFUIA
"The loneliest moment in someone's life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly." The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
This quote was brought to mind by the final steamroller of a story, "Retrospective," in this wonderful collection of thought-provoking stories. I appreciated all but one of the 7 other stories, which revolve mostly around Jews in World War II Europe, communists and the red scare during the McCarthy era, and Israel. I cannot begin to discuss all of the stories here, so I'll just hit some of my high points.
While the stories involve so many relationships and emotions, the common thread seemed to be the character's revelation of self through loneliness, including: an elderly widower, remarried late and wanting to belong to an old world culture (or a religion); an Israeli soldier's need for his amputee brother's love and to be an important part of his small family contrasted with his selfish feelings for the bro's girl and his guilt from what is on track to be much more; loneliness borne of fear and resentment that comes from being a 13-year-old Jewish girl escaping through sewers and living hungry and in hiding during the coldest winter ever; isolation from a daughter and loss of status in the world; a daughter's loneliness from normal society outside the narrow world of her father, a communist party leader in the U.S. during the Eisenhower years, and her eagerness to do anything to escape; and, a man's loneliness from the loss of his relationship with his wife and 10-year-old son caused by his selfishness and ego.
In "Retrospective," which I consider the best short story I've read in many years, Ms. Antopol quilts the mind with a vivid landscape over which the reader thinks she/he knows the way.
There was a time when I didn't read short stories, because I said I didn't like getting emotionally invested in characters and plot only to have to move on a short while later. It was a foolish sentiment, in retrospect, one which I abandoned about 15 years ago when I realized how rich the short story landscape truly was, filled with talented authors creating stories with the power of full-length novels, stories whose characters intrigued me and made me long to know more about what happened to them when the stories ended.
Molly Antopol's new collection, The UnAmericans, is one of the reasons I'm glad I read short stories. Every one of the eight stories in this collection packed a quiet power, richly drawn characters, and tremendously compelling explorations of human emotion in typical and unusual situations.
The characters in Antopol's stories are Jewish people spanning the 1950s through the present.
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