District of Columbia, May 22, 2020 (Senmer News Wire) – Author Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is pleased to announce that his book, Beloved Comrades: a Novel in Stories received a 5-star review from US Book Views.
“A story of drama, community, friendship, and love that shows how even the smallest event can send ripples throughout lives and lifetimes” – 5 Stars USBookViews.com
Through multiple perspectives across multiple generations, Beloved Comrades by Yermiyahu Ahron Taub tells the compelling collective tale of the community tied together by the Congregation Haverim Ahuvim. Although a novel in stories, Beloved Comrades reads as a coherent whole, smoothly transitioning from one story to the next so that only the changes in perspectives and setting indicate the change. Taub takes readers into the present and past lives of a diverse cast of well-developed characters, from the founding congregants to their children’s teachers to the former owner of the mansion. He gives them glimpses into the shared childhood of Arnold and his former best friend/fellow founding congregant, Eli, as long-held tensions bubble to the surface; explores the beautiful marriage of Arnold and Myrna; dives into the psyche of Agnes Smith and her focus on her student and Eli’s daughter, Mindl; records the downfall of the last of the Van Nuys family; and more.
In looking at these different characters’ lives, Taub takes the reader on an emotional journey that is both heart-warming and heart-wrenching. Whether it is the tender love and understanding between Arnold and Myrna, the frustrating mutual jealousy and lost friendship between Arnold and Eli, or Agnes’s guilt and sadness over her niece’s death, emotions run high for both the characters and the reader. However, Taub manages to pull these emotions and the emotional engagement off with simple, subdued writing that is quick and easy to read despite the book being 284 pages long. It does take a few pages—almost twenty—for these emotions to really start seeping through this writing. Once they do, though, the book picks up and becomes a very enjoyable read.
More satisfying than the emotional journey, though, is the fact that this novel conveys themes that apply both to the community it depicts and to anyone who chooses to read it. This book focuses on a couple of specific groups of people that are woefully underrepresented, Jewish Americans and Jewish immigrants, which is a refreshing change of pace given the steady supply of fiction about Christian communities available. Naturally, some of the themes, such as immigration, apply to this demographic in particular. However, the majority that the novel portrays—love, friendship, community, faith, sexuality, social justice—are universal, something that all readers can connect to. This fact reminds the reader that no matter our religion, our nationality, our background, we are all still human.
Beloved Comrades is a beautifully written work about the long-lasting effects of the most minor events in our lives. Taub perfectly highlights moments from his characters’ private and social lives, revealing through the contrast discrepancies not only among the congregants but between their public and private personas. Gentile readers might struggle with the Hebrew and Yiddish terms but, fortunately, a handy list of terms and their definitions have been provided at the end of the book, along with a cast of characters and their relationship to the others provided at the beginning. The book might be about the Jewish experience, but its appeal speaks to the universal human experience.
http://usbookviews.com/5-stars-beloved-comrades-a-novel-in-stories/
Beloved Comrades: a Novel in Stories
By Yermiyahu Ahron Taub
Publisher: Anaphora Literary Press
Release Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1681145235 (pb)
ISBN: 978-1681145242 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1681145259 (ebook)
Pages: 284
Genre: Fiction, Multi-cultural fiction, Jewish Stories
About the Author
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub (www.yataub.net) is the author of the short story collection, Prodigal Children in the House of G-d (2018), winner of two CIPA EVVY Merit Awards (LGBTQ Fiction and Religious/Spiritual Fiction) and named a finalist for a Foreword INDIES Award in the Religious (Adult Fiction) category. He is also the author of six books of poetry, including A Mouse Among Tottering Skyscrapers: Selected Yiddish Poems (2017). Preparing to Dance: New Yiddish Songs, a CD of nine of his Yiddish poems set to music by was released in 2014. Taub was honored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage as one of New York’s best emerging Jewish artists and has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. With co-translator Ellen Cassedy, he is the recipient of the 2012 Yiddish Book Center Translation Prize and the 2014-2017 Modern Language Association’s Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies for Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories by Blume Lempel (2016). His short stories have appeared in numerous publications, including Hamilton Stone Review, Jewrotica, Junto Magazine, Oyster River Pages, Marathon Literary Review, Second Hand Stories Podcast, and Verdad Magazine.
Website: https://yataubdotnet.wordpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005912715637
Source: Beloved Comrades: A Novel in Stories – A Story Of Drama, Community, Friendship, And Love
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