Customer Reviews (1)

Evidence of genius
This small collection of Babel stories is one of the first evidences in English of Babel's storytelling genius. His legendary gangster Benya Krik is the heart of the opening story. Babel's writing has with all its earthy directness an irony and humor. He is a master of character creation, and his work has an unusual vibrancy and liveliness. One of the most well- known stories 'My Dovecoat' goes to the heart of Russian Jewish, of Odessa reality.
Babel is one of those story- writers whose work is dense and compressed, as poetry. Every line must be attended to, and there are lines which strike the heart like steel. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

It could have been better
This selection of Charles contains at least two masterpieces, Singer's 'Gimpel the Fool' and Babel's 'First Love'. It also contains two wonderful surprises, Yehuda Yaari's modern version of the Solomonic story of two mothers contending for the same child, and the Alexander Baron story of his two grandmothers, one living in a house of light and joy, and the other in the house of darkness. Baron's changed perspective of this in adulthood makes for a moving and perceptive work.Other stories are by Irwin Shaw, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Brian Glanville,Isaac Rosenfeld, Dan Jacobson,S. Yizhar, Arnold Wesker, Greda Charles.
My sense is that given the riches availablethe collection could have been a much better one..

It should have been much better
There are some truly great stories in this collection. Singer's ' Gimpel the Fool' Babel's 'First Love' There are a couple of wonderful surprises Yehuda Yaari's 'The Judgment of Solomon' about a mother who in saving her child from the Nazis sends him with a family to Eretz Yisrael where he is adopted by a woman who shows great love and responsibility in caring for him. The original mother's arrival to the Holy Land leads to a conflict over the child. The tale is told wonderfully. Another real surprise is a story by Alexander Baron 'My Grandmother's Hands' of his visits to two different grandmothers, a maternal one whose house was filled with joy, light, love and warmth- and a paternal one whose house was dark and filled only with his grandmother's hunger for some sign of affection. The wonderful way Baron tells first the story of his own childhood repulsion before his second grandmother- and then his reaction and new understanding when he contemplates this many years later- is truly moving.
On the negative side I noticed that Charles chose at least three stories which have a very negative view of small Jewish worlds they portray. One of these is her own, and the other is Philip Roth's 'The Conversion of the Jews'.
On the whole then a mixed collection which while containing a few gems could have been considering the richness of material available to her could have been much better.
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