Kaplan’s achievement, which continues to make her fiction relevant, is the creation of 'ferociously observant,' embattled-yet-avid young women who possess a complicated consciousness. With remarkable insight and empathy, Kaplan, like the characters in these stories, troubles the surfaces of Jewish family life, revealing an emotional landscape marked by grief and trauma. In the process, Kaplan reawakens the distinctive, and slowly disappearing, Bronx voices of mid-twentieth-century Jewish New York. Both old and new readers will relish Kaplan’s brilliant artwork of ventriloquism.” — Jewish Book Council
“Kaplan’s incisive attention to detail matches her gift for conveying the mysterious mesh of physicality and consciousness, while her characters' predicaments are at once ordinary and profound, specific yet universal in their illumination of inheritance, loss, exile, and generational divides.” — Booklist
“A warm, funny, Jewish collection of stories featuring bold and nuanced Jewish women.” — Alma
"This reissue seems likely to find [Kaplan] a new set of fans...Snarky young ladies are timeless. Plus, the dialogue is to die for." — Kirkus Reviews
“A joy of discovery attends the publication of Johanna Kaplan’s Loss of Memory is Only Temporary (Ecco)—a volume that gathers her cacophonous, mordantly funny stories from the 1960s and ‘70s (and includes the contents of her prized debut, Other People’s Lives)… It fizzes with the urbane energy of J.D. Salinger, Grace Paley, and Deborah Eisenberg—a restless delight.” — Vogue
“Kaplan offers sly glimpses of human foibles and vulnerabilities. . . . Francine Prose’s preface aptly praises Kaplan’s 'paradoxically scathing and compassionate insight' into characters revealed in the midst of an uncertain present, poised between Old World and New. A rare gem, recovered.” — Library Journal (starred review)
“Readers…can learn much from Ms. Kaplan…This is fiction of complexity and depth.” — Wall Street Journal
“Laced with humor and high spirits…talent and wit everywhere play through [Kaplan's] writings.” — Commentary
“The reappearance of some of Johanna Kaplan’s brilliant short stories in Loss of Memory Is Only Temporary is cause for celebration…Hers is a distinctive voice with an uncannily pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, in any language and in any accent." — Hadassah Magazine
"One of the most remarkable features of Kaplan’s collection is the uncanny way that the past comes looping back around, the same characters and images recurring in different times and stories...The past, Kaplan shows us, infiltrates even the most private spaces of the imagination." — Jewish Review of Books
Kaplan’s incisive attention to detail matches her gift for conveying the mysterious mesh of physicality and consciousness, while her characters' predicaments are at once ordinary and profound, specific yet universal in their illumination of inheritance, loss, exile, and generational divides.”
Kaplan’s achievement, which continues to make her fiction relevant, is the creation of 'ferociously observant,' embattled-yet-avid young women who possess a complicated consciousness. With remarkable insight and empathy, Kaplan, like the characters in these stories, troubles the surfaces of Jewish family life, revealing an emotional landscape marked by grief and trauma. In the process, Kaplan reawakens the distinctive, and slowly disappearing, Bronx voices of mid-twentieth-century Jewish New York. Both old and new readers will relish Kaplan’s brilliant artwork of ventriloquism.”
Readers…can learn much from Ms. Kaplan…This is fiction of complexity and depth.”
The reappearance of some of Johanna Kaplan’s brilliant short stories in Loss of Memory Is Only Temporary is cause for celebration…Hers is a distinctive voice with an uncannily pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, in any language and in any accent."
Laced with humor and high spirits…talent and wit everywhere play through [Kaplan's] writings.
A joy of discovery attends the publication of Johanna Kaplan’s Loss of Memory is Only Temporary (Ecco)—a volume that gathers her cacophonous, mordantly funny stories from the 1960s and ‘70s (and includes the contents of her prized debut, Other People’s Lives)… It fizzes with the urbane energy of J.D. Salinger, Grace Paley, and Deborah Eisenberg—a restless delight.”
A warm, funny, Jewish collection of stories featuring bold and nuanced Jewish women.”
Kaplan’s incisive attention to detail matches her gift for conveying the mysterious mesh of physicality and consciousness, while her characters' predicaments are at once ordinary and profound, specific yet universal in their illumination of inheritance, loss, exile, and generational divides.”
Readers…can learn much from Ms. Kaplan…This is fiction of complexity and depth.”
★ 02/01/2022
The latest addition to Ecco's eclectic and reliably rewarding "Art of the Story" series revives Kaplan's Jewish Book Award-winning 1975 collection Other People's Lives, now with two more essays. Dropping readers into those lives as they unfold in all their messy, egoistic imperfection, Kaplan offers sly glimpses of human foibles and vulnerabilities, often through the penetrating eyes of young misfits, latter-day Jane Eyres. The opening novella, "Other People's Lives," in which emotionally troubled Louise is abruptly moved from an upscale sanitarium into the raucous home of Maria, a German immigrant prone to malapropisms, is a tour de force of internal and external dialogue and monologue with all the eloquent verisimilitude of a Robert Altman film. VERDICT Francine Prose's preface aptly praises Kaplan's "paradoxically scathing and compassionate insight" into characters revealed in the midst of an uncertain present, poised between Old World and New. A rare gem, recovered.
2021-11-30
Stories of New York Jewish lives in the 1970s.
"You were like really always into being Jewish weren't you?" asks an old schoolmate of the narrator's in "Tales of My Great-Grandfathers," one of two new pieces included here along with all the stories from Other People's Lives, a collection originally published in 1975 to remarkable acclaim. Kaplan's debut won the Jewish Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Though she published just one more book, a novel called O My America! and both were long out of print, this reissue seems likely to find her a new set of fans. A warm introduction by Francine Prose alerts us to the joys of Kaplan's stories: "smart, uneasy, cranky heroines," "dialogue [with] the literary equivalent of perfect pitch," and so many delightful sentences you can literally open the book at random and find one. In "Sickness," Miriam, the cynical and whip-smart heroine of several stories, recalls running into an acquaintance ("on the dumb side") in Alexander's department store. The girl is so eager to show off her purchases she rips open a shopping bag full of what she believes to be "gorgeous underpants" in the middle of the store. Miriam is not sold. "It seemed to me that these nylon underpants with little hearts dancing over the crotch were the most ridiculous things I had ever seen....Suddenly I got the idea that if Andrea had underpants with two hearts embroidered on them, maybe if someone ever got a good look at her heart, they would find two little pairs of white underpants stitched on it." In "Sour or Suntanned, It Makes No Difference," Miriam is trapped at a Socialist-Zionist summer camp where she's reduced to watching insects buzz around a lightbulb for fun: "Miriam started to wonder whether these were Socialist bugs who believed in sharing with each other what they had, or else bugs who were secretly wishing to keep the whole bulb for themselves and, by politely flying close together, just faking it." Another such skeptic narrates "Babysitting," possibly the funniest story. Sent by the school guidance counselor to care for the children of "American's enigmatic wanderer-poet-playwright" Ted Marshak, she goes through his mail, answers his phone, reads a draft left lying on his desk. As with Miriam and the underpants, she's not impressed.
Though some situations feel dated, snarky young ladies are timeless. Plus, the dialogue is to die for.
06/01/2022
This new short story collection includes stories that were originally published in Kaplan's Other People's Lives. Great new additions include the autobiographical "Tales of my Great-Grandfathers" and "Family Obligation." The setting of several of the stories is the Jewish areas of the Upper West Side of Manhattan after World War II. The characters include Holocaust survivors with black ink on their arms, an ornery teenager who is angry with her mother, a woman recently released from an institution designated for mental health patients, and an annoying friend whose speech is a never-ending burst of excited language. Narrator Nicole Poole does an excellent job bringing the characters to life. Her perfect pacing and tone capture the characters' unique personalities and speech patterns. Poole's Polish-, German-, and Yiddish-accented English add authenticity. The pronunciation of Hebrew words is not always perfect, but that does not impact the enjoyment of the stories. VERDICT Listeners who are nostalgic about the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Jewish sleep-away camp, or Shakespeare in the Park will especially enjoy hearing about these complex characters and their lives.—Ilka Gordon
With vibrant versatility, Nicole Poole narrates this collection of five short stories and a novella. In “Other People’s Lives,” Poole exhibits impressive range as she executes a strident cacophony of dialogue, especially in her characterization of Maria, the German immigrant whose home the keenly observant Louise joins as a boarder. Each story is given the unique tenor of the postwar Jewish experience, bridging the old world and the new through the voice of Poole, whose presentation delivers an emotional blend of history and circumstance. From the young, sarcastic protagonist, Miriam, in “Sour or Suntanned, It Makes No Difference” to the flinty Naomi of the title story, Poole’s narration illuminates this collection’s theme that history will not be ignored. D.H.R. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
With vibrant versatility, Nicole Poole narrates this collection of five short stories and a novella. In “Other People’s Lives,” Poole exhibits impressive range as she executes a strident cacophony of dialogue, especially in her characterization of Maria, the German immigrant whose home the keenly observant Louise joins as a boarder. Each story is given the unique tenor of the postwar Jewish experience, bridging the old world and the new through the voice of Poole, whose presentation delivers an emotional blend of history and circumstance. From the young, sarcastic protagonist, Miriam, in “Sour or Suntanned, It Makes No Difference” to the flinty Naomi of the title story, Poole’s narration illuminates this collection’s theme that history will not be ignored. D.H.R. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine