Synopses & Reviews
Elisa Albert's debut story collection marks the arrival of an extraordinary new voice in fiction. In
How This Night Is Different, Albert boldly illuminates the struggles of young, disaffected Jews to find spiritual fulfillment. With wit and wisdom, she confronts themes -- self-deprecation, stressful family relationships, sex, mortality -- that have been hallmarks of her literary predecessors. But Albert brings a decidedly fresh, iconoclastic, twenty-first-century attitude to the table.
Holidays, gatherings, and rites of passage provide the backdrop for these ten provocative stories. The characters who populate How This Night Is Different are ambivalent, jaded, and in serious want of connection. As they go through the motions of familial duty and religious observance, they find themselves continually longing for more. In prose that is by turns hilarious and harrowing, Albert details the quest for acceptance, a happier view of the past, and above all the possibility of a future.
From the hormonally charged concentration camp teen tour in "The Living" to the sexually frustrated young mother who regresses to bat mitzvah-aged antics in "Everything But," and culminating with the powerful and uproariously apropos finale of "Etta or Bessie or Dora or Rose," How This Night Is Different is sure to titillate, charm, and profoundly resonate with anyone who's ever felt conflicted about his or her faith, culture, or place in the world.
Review
"Explores traditional Jewish rituals with youthful, irreverent exuberance...hilariously vulgar."
-- Publishers Weekly
Review
"Only a writer as daring as Elisa Albert would end a sharp-witted, funny, and profoundly sad debut collection with a story that yanks off the writerly mask and slashes the safety net. My jaw dropped -- and not just because I was laughing."
-- David Gates, author of Jernigan and The Wonders of the Invisible World
Review
"Elisa Albert is the wild, late-coming progeny of Philip Roth and Grace Paley, and we are lucky to have her. Her stories take contemporary Jewish life by the scruff of its neck and give it the shaking that it deserves. There is no piety here, only what you want most from a story: hot prose and the human comedy."
-- Jonathan Wilson, author of A Palestine Affair
Review
"Elisa Albert provides ample evidence of just how this smart, funny, outrageous young Jewish writer is different -- she's wildly entertaining, incisive as an ice pick, deeply engaged, and curiously, memorably moving. Philip Roth will surely be amused and deliciously appalled, as will you, Gentle Reader, at her inheritance and renewal of the culture and the dream."
-- Jayne Anne Phillips, author of Machine Dreams and Motherkind
Review
"Elisa Albert is a funny and gutsy writer with a knack for locating the absurd poignancy in familiar situations. This is an accomplished, moving and often risky debut."
-- Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land and Venus Drive
Review
"Elisa Albert spins dark comedy into gold. Smart, sexy, and funny as all get-out, her stories are also profound and poignant. This is a story collection to cherish."
-- Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of Hester Among the Ruins and An Almost Perfect Moment
Review
"An exciting debut: sincerely touching, mordantly funny and superbly assured."-- Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Elisa Albert is the author of the short story collection How This Night is Different and the novel The Book of Dahlia. She is currently editing an anthology about sibling relationships called Freud's Blind Spot, to be published in 2010. Albert is a founding editor of Jewcy.com and an adjunct assistant professor of creative writing at Columbia University.
Table of Contents
Contents
The Mother Is Always Upset
When You Say You're a Jew
So Long
Everything But
Spooked
How This Night Is Different
The Living
Hotline
We Have Trespassed
Etta or Bessie or Dora or Rose