About the book, from the author's website:
The sumptuous meal Joseph Licht prepares in his Tel Aviv beachfront penthouse is even better organized than his customary elegant dinner parties, but then his guests are more special than usual: in honor of his own fiftieth birthday, Joseph will host his five grown sons and his new daughter-in-law for the entire Sabbath. It is the first time the family will be reunited in twenty years, since the day Joseph left behind his entire life – wife Rebecca, sons, father, the religious moshav where he grew up – in favor of a riveting affair with his soulmate, illui Yoel Rosenzweig, the genius rabbi of his generation. Their love affair has long since ended, but its echoes reverberate over twenty years and into the lives of Joseph, Rebecca, and their sons in ways none of them could have predicted. In this novel of desire and need, of choices and consequences, no one is unaffected.Among the early praise for Light Fell:
"In his exquisite, marvelously peopled and extraordinarily moving debut novel, Evan Fallenberg gives us, among other treasures, a uniquely drawn protagonist…Light Fell helps illuminate, to the great satisfaction of the reader, the ever-complex human condition, the mysteries of desire and, when we ourselves grant it, the astonishing power of forgiveness."Read an excerpt from Light Fell and learn more about the author and his work at Evan Fallenberg's website.
—Aryeh Lev Stollman, author of The Far Euphrates and The Illuminated Soul
"Light Fell weaves a complex and moving tapestry of a family worn thin and unraveled by a father's choice. At the heart of Fallenberg's powerful novel are the difficult questions of love and responsibility to ourselves and those we love. Light Fell refuses to stop at easy resolutions; instead, it deftly and knowingly honors the overlapping layers of family, sexuality and faith."
—Victoria Redel, author of The Border of Truth and Loverboy
"Light Fell illuminates all the complexities, the contradictions, and the collisions of faith, family, and passion. With this story of an Israeli man-- a professor, a husband, a father -- who falls in love with a rabbi, Evan Fallenberg has written an honest and brave book."
—Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of An Almost Perfect Moment
"[An] ambitious debut. Fallenberg's descriptions of Israeli life are credible and absorbing. The book adroitly sketches the heartfelt struggles of a sympathetic cast."
—Publishers Weekly
Evan Fallenberg is an instructor in the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and the translator of works by, among others, Meir Shalev, Alon Hilu, Ron Leshem, and Batya Gur.
The Page 69 Test: Light Fell.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
