Awards

• Commended for National Jewish Book Award (Fiction) 2002

Overview

Psychologist Alexander Lescziak savors a life of quiet sophistication on Manhattan's Upper West Side, turning a blind eye to the past of his Polish ??migr?? parents. Then a new patient declares that he is the doctor's half-brother, the product of a union between Lescziak's Jewish mother and a German prisoner of war. The confrontation jolts Lescziak out of his complacency: suddenly, his failing marriage, his wife's infatuation with his best friend, and the disappearance of his young lover and suicidal patient, Nella, close in on him. Lescziak escapes into the recesses of his imagination, where his mother's affair with the German prisoner comes to life in precise, gorgeous detail. The novel unfolds into a romance set in England's Lake District in wartime, as Busch shows how our past presses on the present.

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9780393049787

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Reviews

Alexander Lescziak is a psychologist who practises in Manhattan and lives a life of quiet desperation. He believes his wife, Liz, to be having an affair with his best friend and fellow psychiatrist, Teddy Levenson. He himself has crossed the forbidden line and embarked on an affair with a severely traumatized young patient, Nella. But as the book opens, Nella has disappeared and a new patient has come to him: William Kessler, 'short, slender, with a strong nose and fierce, dark eyes', who leans towards him to tell him, 'You're my brother.' And so begin two contrapuntal lines of narrative: one stretching into the past, as Alex visits the library and begins to research the wartime history of the northern British town Barrow-in-Furness, where his Polish parents found shelter and his mother fell in love with a German prisoner-of-war; the other reaching forward as he searches for Nella's face on the street and wishes he could 'find a way to be in love' with his wife. All the time, Alex is assailed by thoughts of other encounters. He knows he is losing his ability to help people because his own past is consuming him: listening to the troubles of one of his patients, a patrolman, he thinks of Nella, 'who wished to be healed'; as another patient scolds, 'why haven't you asked me about my childhood?' he thinks of his childhood home and its 'two-story silence'. These shadows from the past both enrich the narrative and cloud it. One of the strengths of the book is its thoughtful examination of the multiple layers of one man's life. However, too often the layers overlap so rapidly that the reader feels swept away, unable to linger in any one scene. In all, though, this a fascinating, provocative and visceral read. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Frederick Busch (1941–2006) was the recipient of many honors, including an American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, a National Jewish Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award. The prolific author of sixteen novels and six collections of short stories, Busch is renowned for his writing’s emotional nuance and minimal, plainspoken style. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he lived most of his life in upstate New York, where he worked for forty years as a professor at Colgate University.

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