“Sister Hills” tells of two women who settle on opposite hills outside Jerusalem in 1973. This often is also true in the other seven stories collected in this volume. But then he wrenches them back to their real worlds, where history has encouraged each of them to stake an ideological territory that others approach at their peril. Englander briefly tweaks them from the brink, letting them revel in the rain because Mark and Lauren so rarely see it in Israel. We know the couples are treading on thin ice. It’s especially needed when the game of imagining who might save them exposes the disquieting reality of their relationships.ĭisquiet is a reality for readers, too. … Culture is nothing.” This obiter dicta notwithstanding, their culture, aka history, has netted them so no one can move without yanking at the others and rubbing them raw. The chasm between these couples widens as Deb mourns the deaths among the generation of Holocaust survivors, and Mark says, “You can’t build Jerusalem on the foundation of one terrible crime. “You should see how we live with ten.” That’s their 10 daughters. Eyeing the handsome Florida house with its huge kitchen and pool, he says, “All this house … and one son? Can you imagine?” But he’s not at ease, forced by the wives’ friendship to be pally with a guy he doesn’t know and isn’t much taking to. Deep-healing power? Isn’t detergent supposed to have deep-cleaning power? Slip of the pen on our narrator’s part? Not likely.
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