The Place Will Comfort You : Stories

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Summary: San Francisco Chronicle, Sun. 5/30/04
Review: Books in Brief/ Amy Westervelt

What usually comes of writerly attempts to mix fiction and nonfiction is a hybrid that's not much good on either count -- too dry to make for good fiction, too fluffy to work as nonfiction. All of which makes Naama Goldstein's first collection of short stories, "The Place Will Comfort You," a real accomplishment. Not only does she do an admirable job of blending engaging narrative with political commentary, she does it over and over again in eight charming stories.
An Israeli American writer, Goldstein's stories follow American Jews to Israel and back again, chronicles the Israeli relationship with American Jews and vice versa, and tells the universal story of the foreigner looking for comfort in a strange land. Goldstein writes vividly, showing the insanity of war through little things like an Israeli child's fear of an Arabic food vendor or a detailed description of the new, iron-clad, blast-resistant doors that are all the rage in Tel Aviv.

The stories get progressively less linear and culminate in the transcription of a conversation between two acquaintances, a man and a woman who had been neighbors in Israel and are now both living near Boston. The conversation happens in disjointed spurts, but it's the overall feeling of it, not the content, that's important here. Neither seems exactly sane, but they get each other in some way, which leaves us with a sort of sad hope -- these people with no home can at least find a sense of comfort in each other.

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Summary: Beautiful, evocative, witty short stories...
Review: Naama Goldstein's The Place Will Comfort You is full of humorous, mesmerizing stories centered on the cultural differences between Israel and America. Each story is strong and stands on its own. I finished this collection last night, yet am still thinking about these stories. In most cases, I find a short story is an instance of excellent writing that somehow lacks the power and force of a novel, but in Goldstein's case, all of these stories have tremendous power, even more than your average 400-page long novel. My favorite stories are "A Pillar of a Cloud," "A Verse in the Margins," and "The Conduct of Consoling." Each story has a touch of earnest humor coupled with deceptively simple prose. The combination was irresistible and I couldn't put this book down. This is an impressive debut effort from a promising author. I highly recommend this collection, even if you tend to shy away from short stories. I for one love short stories and these are as good as they get. They are not to be missed.

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Summary: Neither here nor there
Review: Short stories should, by definition, tell a complete story, but sometimes they leave you hanging, either with a sense of unfinished business or with a desire to know what happens next. And reviewers have a habit of declaring stories "radiant," when the average reader feels like he or she has been left in the dark.

Such is the case with Naama Goldstein's debut collection, The Place Will Comfort You (Scribner, May 2004), which is set both in Israel and in suburban America. If there is any one word that can serve as a common theme for the eight stories in this book, it would be 'longing,' for the characters all seem to have been set adrift by the author, wishing they could be somewhere else. The result, unfortunately, is that they end up neither here nor there.

Half the stories take place in Israel, and center on young, religious American girls who have recently made Aliyah. In "The Verse in the Margins," a brand new student of the religious texts becomes tainted by Israel's secular and permissive culture, and shocks her teacher by wearing earrings to school. Expelled from the classroom, the girl disappears from the story and instead of learning about her fate, the reader follows her teacher out to the nearby sand dunes.

Another rebellious religious girl is Shulee, who remains sympathetic even though she makes problems on a school field trip. "No one but she would venture this far from the group," the author writes, as Shulee takes off on her own. "Only Shulee. When she returned she would be in spectacular trouble, a star, and she would also have eaten." But we never learn what happens to Shulee and her friend when they return to the group, for when the story ends, the reader, like these likeable characters, is left stranded in the woods.

The stories in the second half of the book all deal with 'descending,' and their characters are, like the author herself, Israelis who have relocated to homes in the United States. "We thought we were ascenders for life. We were never sufficiently absorbed. We left and now we're here and not there," says one character in "The Worker Rests Under The Hero Tree."

But, here again the reader finishes the story without feeling totally satisfied. The story "Anatevka Tender" deals with a mother who sees her son go insane in the Lebanon War and retreats to an American condo. What happened to the young man? What will happen to the young man? These are questions left unanswered.

What is good about this book? (And there are reasons to read it). As author and reviewer Caroline Leavitt wrote, Naama Goldstein writes "in sparkling, funny, and syncopated prose. Images pop. Words bristle with meaning." Goldstein also expertly highlights the telling details in her scenes. Her circa 1980s stories from Israel vividly portray the breakfast cereals, prime-time television programs and tiled floors that were popular at the time.

Like the characters in the stories of this book, the reader comes away longing for more, for conclusion, for understanding. Perhaps in Goldstein's next book, her enormous potential will be fully realized.