The novel "Edges" by Leora Skolkin-Smith, edited and published by Grace Payley, on which the movie THE FRAGILE MISTRESS is based, has won wide acclaim and multiple awards. Read an excerpt from the book...
Praise for "EDGES", by Leora Skolkin-Smith:
"Edges" is
a dark and penetrating look at pre-1967 Israel and Palestine through the eyes of
a 14 year old Liana Bialik. After her father's suicide, Liana's
Jerusalem-born mother decides to take Liana and her sister back to her
homeland, where her family had lived for four generations. Once they get to
Israel Liana, who feels overwhelmed and suffocated by her mother, begins to
detach herself from her. She embarks on a mission of self-discovery to learn
why her mother does not speak about her father and why he took his own life.
Edges is well-written, powerful in both imagery and subject matter..."
-Jewish Book World,
Spring 2006 - Vol. 24, Number 1
"In Edges Leora
Smith skillfully tells the story of a girl of fourteen in the wake of her
father's suicide, brought abruptly by her distraught mother from a comfortable
suburban West to the harsh terrain of a young State of Israel. The girl
is caught in the maelstrom of political claims between Israel and a West Bank,
still part of the Kingdom of Jordan. The turmoil both of the girl and her
mother is graphically detailed as they struggle to define themselves in the
light of a haunted past and present. The poetry of the girl's sexual awakening
ripples through many pages, softening the fierce realities of the conflict
between Arab and Jew. The pages evoke as well the memories of a shared land,
and the mother's childhood growing up in an old Jerusalem before the city was
separated by physical barriers, the religious, cultural, divide between Arab and Jew easier
to bridge. The author's vivid sense of landscape, her gift for identifying with
both mother and daughter, Arab and Jew, gives the novel a unique sense of
balance and brings the reader, regardless of political conviction into sympathy
with this portrait of a vanished Jerusalem."
-Mark Mirsky, FICTION
"Edges is an
elegantly written, quite moving novel that has a lot to say about love,
identity, history and the meaning of nationality. The book is worth reading
alone for its superb language, but it is gripping and unforgettable as well in
its story telling and evocation of place and emotions. It is a wonderful novel
by an author with a quite accomplished voice and style, one well deserving a
wide and receptive audience.
--Oscar Hijuelos,
author of the Pulitzer-prize winning novel, "THE MAMBO KING SINGS SONGS OF
LOVE"
"Edges is an
elegant and moving novel. Leora Skolkin-Smith has that rare gift of the writer
who can convey the sensibility — the essence of a place and its people
— with precision and clarity. A provocative debut."
—Katharine
Weber, NY Times book critic, author of TRIANGLE, LITTLE WOMEN, THE MUSIC LESSON
"Where, and how
and to whom do we really belong? Skolkin's brilliant debut novel is a hypnotic
meditation on the ever-changing boundaries of love and need. A coming of age
story of the bond between a young American and her powerful mother, etched in a
wartime Mideast as shifting and dangerous and mysterious as the Israeli
desert."
—Caroline
Leavitt, columnist, Boston Globe, author of GIRLS IN TROUBLE and COMING BACK TO
ME
"EDGES" is
a novel told with restraint and poetic precision...memorable (for the) sense of
place that Ms. Skolkin-Smith has achieved -- the sunny and scary Jerusalem and
countryside -- and the hope, love, hate and fatalism of the groups, Palestinian
and Israeli, living amongst and apart from each other..."
-- Robert Whitcomb ,
"The Providence Journal".
"A feverish,
sensual, remarkable book."
--Meredith Sue Willis
About the Author of
EDGES:
Leora Skolkin-Smith has
received grants from The New York State Council on the Arts, The Department of
Cultural affairs, The Millay Colony for the Arts, The Vermont Studio Center,
and Art-Without-Walls. She was awarded a Teaching Fellowship for graduate work
at Sarah Lawrence College where she holds a BA and MFA in writing. Recently
awarded a PEN/Faulkner Writers-in-the-Schools Award and Selected for the Miami
International Book Festival, Ms. Skolkin-Smith's novel "Edges" is in
its third printing and has been released as an audiobook, produced by the
Midsummer Sound Company (www.midsummersoundcompany.com) and narrated by
acclaimed actress Tovah Feldshuh. The novel was also picked by "The
Bloomsbury Review's 25th Anniversary Issue" as a "Favorite Book of
the Last 25 Years."
If you are interested in reading Leora's novel, you can find it on amazon.com through the link below (click on the title image), or in good bookstores:
