Synopses & Reviews
The yearnings of a little sister, the hazy memories of a concentration camp liberator, and the romantic entanglements of political activists are portrayed in The Sweetheart Is In, S.L. Wisenberg's first collection of short stories. Each of these edgy, lyrical stories creates its own universe in the space of a few pages even while overlapping characters and themes. The award-winning title story captures the longings, personal and political, of a sensitive girl on the cusp of adolescence as she tries to find her place in the world-and within her self-contained Jewish community in Houston-during the Vietnam era. Wisenberg also reveals a mischievous side when she retells well-known fairy tales in a darkly whimsical fashion.
Wisenberg's work is part of today's renaissance in Jewish storytelling. Many of her characters are forced to navigate between doubt and faith but fortunately equipped with humor and wisdom.
Review
"
The Sweetheart Is In is a wonderfully varied collection-emphasis on 'wonder.' The range of the book is an accurate measure of the wit and fertile imagination that inform each story."
--Stuart Dybek, author of Childhood and Other Neighborhoods
Review
"The qualities that characterize Wisenberg's work are not easy to come by in today's fiction. Her stories seem to me to have the flat honest gaze of children, who see more than we want them to and do not hesitate to tell all about it. . . . But what's most unusual about her stories is their knowledgeability and utter honesty about religious doubt and yearning. Her stories about souls searching for a profound connection with their Jewishness are unlike any others I know, partly because of that flat-out candor, but partly because of the way her particular style serves her subject." --Rosellen Brown, author of
Half a HeartSynopsis
The yearnings of a little sister, the hazy memories of a concentration camp liberator, and the romantic entanglements of political activists are portrayed in
The Sweetheart Is In, S.L. Wisenberg's first collection of short stories. Each of these edgy, lyrical stories creates its own universe in the space of a few pages even while overlapping characters and themes.
About the Author
S.L. Wisenberg is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her award-winning stories have appeared in the New Yorker, the North American Review, Tikkun, and numerous anthologies, including The 1997 Pushcart Prize XXI. She is a freelance writer and leads writing workshops in Chicago.