Sue's Bookshelf

April 2024

By Sue Littauer

It’s time to get ready for Passover! If you are hosting a seder, in addition to being in charge of the food shopping, the menu, and the beautiful table settings, you have to consider your guest list. Who will you invite this year?

I’ve been thinking about this very question as it relates to the last three books I’ve read recently: “Family Family” by Laurie Frankel, “Don’t Forget to Write” by Sara Goodman Confino, and “Stockholm: A Novel” by Noa Yedlin. These are three books that I highly recommend.

“Family Family” is another home run for Laurie Frankel, author of “This Is How It Always Is.” “Without giving away too much of her dizzying plot, which is supercharged with cliffhanger chapter endings and parallel reveals, the novel is dedicated to the premise that not every adoption story is one of trauma.” – Kirkus Book Reviews I have great admiration for the main character, India Allwood, and find the rest of the characters to be well-developed, endearing, and resourceful. I would love to invite the entire family to my seder so I could observe their interactions firsthand.

My next guest would be great-aunt Ada, Philadelphia’s premiere matchmaker from the book “Don’t Forget to Write.”

She's akin to that strict teacher who initially made your life miserable at the beginning of the school year but turned out to be your favorite of all time by the end. Her witticisms, criticisms, and interactions with the children in “Family Family” are jaw-dropping and highly entertaining.

By this point, I have nine guests lined up, plus my own children and grandchildren, so it’s a good thing that I wouldn’t invite anyone from “Stockholm: A Novel.” The book is full of unlikeable characters. Although I can’t get the book out of my mind, I wouldn’t like to meet any of them.

“A hilarious and profound exploration of mortality, this novel begins with the death of Avishay Sar-Shalom, a renowned economics professor and a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize in economics. Because the Nobel Prize is given only to those who are alive at the time of the announcement, Avishay’s four best friends decide to keep his death a secret for a week until the prize committee in Sweden makes its decision. As the pressure of being discovered mounts, and Avishay’s body steadily decomposes in the background, the reader is thrown headfirst into a wonderfully macabre, slapstick adventure.” – Omer Friedlander, author of “The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land.”

Well, my table is full! Now, on to preparing the charoset, matzo ball soup, brisket, matzo kugel, asparagus, pineapple, strawberries, and the flourless chocolate cake!

The next Center for Jewish Education Book Club Meeting is Wednesday, May 8, at 10:30 a.m. in Room 110 at Shalom Park. We will be discussing “Signal Fires” by Dani Shapiro. All registered Levine-Sklut Jewish Library users are welcome to join. For more information, please contact sueb. littauer@jewishcharlotte.org