What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

Stories

By: Nathan Englander

Narrated by: Various

These eight new stories from the celebrated novelist and short-story writer Nathan Englander display a gifted young author grappling with the great questions of modern life, with a command of language and the imagination that place Englander at the very forefront of contemporary American fiction.

The title story, inspired by Raymond Carver’s masterpiece, is a provocative portrait of two marriages in which the Holocaust is played out as a devastating parlor game. In the outlandishly dark “Camp Sundown” vigilante justice is undertaken by a group of geriatric campers in a bucolic summer enclave. “Free Fruit for Young Widows” is a small, sharp study in evil, lovingly told by a father to a son. “Sister Hills” chronicles the history of Israel’s settlements from the eve of the Yom Kippur War through the present, a political fable constructed around the tale of two mothers who strike a terrible bargain to save a child. Marking a return to two of Englander’s classic themes, “Peep Show” and “How We Avenged the Blums” wrestle with sexual longing and ingenuity in the face of adversity and peril. And “Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother’s Side” is suffused with an intimacy and tenderness that break new ground for a writer who seems constantly to be expanding the parameters of what he can achieve in the short form.

Beautiful and courageous, funny and achingly sad, Englander’s work is a revelation.

Englander at his best!

Always an insightful and provocative writer, Englander reaches deeply into his subject matter, complex as it is, to new heights as both an observer of his chosen culture and as a writer. The sensitive and intelligent aural telling of each story matches the writing.

Mixed Results

The title story is nothing short of amazing, but the the rest of his stories left me flat.

A Laugh Out Loud Book

While I am not usually the laugh out loud type, even when things ARE funny, I can honestly say I did so while reading this book! Intrigued by the premise, I was eager to read it. The subject, Anne Frank, has been close to my heart since I read the diary at age ll and I thought it might be offensive but it was such a ludicrous idea for a story line that it worked.

Single minded and well expressed

The title story is the best criticism of the entire collection. Obsessed with the recent Jewish history the author manages to create an elevated atmosphere - in the best of them. The narrators add a lot of gravity and emotion.

Unexpected

This was a poetic mix of short stories, some so different from the others that it was as if they were by different authors, but all held together with a common theme of the tension between the old and contemporary Jewish experiences. As a non-Jew who is interested in and studies Judaism, I wanted a contemporary, literary perspective on Jewish life that included both observant and secular points of view. I got much more than I expected. Some of the stories are light and easy, some dark and troubling, one read as a writing from the Ketuvim, which is to say biblical. A memorable listen, unexpected in its broadness, affecting in its humanness.