The Dialogues of Time and Entropy

Rating:
Summary: moving
Review: I found the Dialogues of Time and Entropy to be the most moving of Dr. Stollman's works.

Rating:
Summary: Stories full of knowledge, wisdom, and love
Review: It is always interesting to read the short stories of a writer whose novels you love. Aryeh Lev Stollman's debut novel The Far Euphrates won readers from Jewish intellectuals to the judges of the Lambda prize. His second book was a beautiful excursion into the love of a boy for an older woman, strung and stretched over years and a hideous moral dilemma. The stories show Stollman to be a writer of real range and will serve as a fine introduction to one of our best writers.

The stories were published before in little magazines over a period of almost a decade. Readers who admired Aryeh Lev Stollman's novel The Far Euphrates and The Illuminated Soul as well as those new to him have a special treat waiting for them in his new collection of short stories.

Some of the stories reveal the roots of the ideas Stollman juggles in all his fiction: the vividness of the soul in a failing body and brain, deep loyalties of heart and belief tested by change, the choices of children as they approach the world with less innocence and more reason than we can ever guess. As ever, the Holocaust haunts his work but no more than the universal question of the survival and perpetuation of goodness in a world of evil. He is interested in the origins of man's goodness and imagination. His settings are in the United States, Canada, Israel, and Germany.

I enjoyed reading the stories and hope that the collection will deepen the appreciation of many readers for this wonderful writer. I think this would be a good book for a book club interested in taking on readable literary fiction.