What We Talk About When we Talk About Ann Frank by Nathan Englander

This collection of stories published recently provide many different views of the Jewish experience. Being a full bred Irish WASP, our family left the Pope for the Protestant side of the aisle, I can confess no real knowledge of the Jewish experience.

Englander' stories in this book are varied and all are interesting.

The first story in the collection, and the titled one is a story I had read somewhere before. The credits do not state the story had appeared in The New Yorker but I do not know where else I would have red it. Centering on a visit between two Jewish girls who grew up together years after the fact. One girl married an Orthodox Jew, they emigrated to Israel and have ten daughters. The host girl has not stayed that true to her faith living a mostly secular life in the land of plenty. The girls and their husbands share bread, drink, and dope ( pilfered from the son of the stateside Jewish girl) and eventually play the Anne Frank game leading both wives to consider the choices they have made.

Sister Hills traces the history of the settlements in the occupied territories thru two women who with their husbands were the first settlers of Two Hills. The different paths their lives have taken since the pioneer days are laid asunder when a promise on a scary night to " fool fate" comes home to roost years later.

How We Avenged the Blums centers on schoolchildren and how they deal with the AntiSemitism they face while Camp Sundown features what happens when a group of geriatric oldsters at a camp for the same deal with the belief that one of thier fellow campers was a guard at the camps.

Peep Show was not to my taste, a little too non linear for me, while The Reader was interesting in its tale of an author whose audience has left him save for one devoted fan.

The story that was most affecting for me was Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Side. In this story of numbered paragraphs we meet a man and learn his story. We learn of his relationship with a Bosnian woman that has come to an end. We learn of his belief that he has no history. He does not know enough about himself and his history in his very historied group. We hear of his history, we see his ancestors and what he learns and what he tells as his history but it is as his ex lover tells him. If you do not know your history create one and soon the stories are real. As one who regrets not knowing of his grandparents and family history and the stories that must be out there somewhere I can relate. One of the best things a family can do is make sure that a family history is there to be heard if one longs for it. As this story shows sometimes a story is all one can have to give that touchstone.