Overview

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree... I shall have some peace there. --W.B. Yeats A cheerleader touches a high school wrestler's face, running her fingers along his two-day beard. Thus begins their covert affair, one so understated he can't be certain she's aware of it, from which he will date his sexual life. A cynical greeting card writer, who becomes America's best-selling poet, seeks redemption on tour. Enchanted by a woman at a party, a man at loose ends recalls Calla Dakos and six weeks that shook his life. A sandwich maker discovers a book of Jewish folklore, left by a customer in his shop, and is inspired by the legendary Rabbi Akiba, who was also a failure at 40. Upon hearing of his sister's terminal diagnosis, a private detective stages a comeback on the freestyle wrestling circuit. These three novellas and two stories portray people in crisis, searching for Innisfree.

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9781958015018

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Eron's incisive debut collection offers a deeply philosophical, yet still lighthearted, examination of the human condition. The characters populating these three novellas and two short stories may all walk different paths-among them, readers will meet a private eye, a greeting card writer, and a sandwich maker- but they each grapple with existential questions that transcend their differences as they confront the uncertainties of identity, authenticity, family, and romance with probing persistence. Eron's stories hold up a mirror that will inevitably reflect the lives of contemporary readers while challenging us to look more closely at who we are and how we live. The novellas Welcome to Gilgamesh and The Chimera in the Plaster center on characters struggling to determine what is real in their lives and how to relate authentically to others. Eron gives readers a fascinating glimpse inside their minds, illuminating the repetition, rumination, and occasional self-delusion of their often-messy thought processes as they evaluate themselves, their relationships, and the biggest of all questions as represented, in The Legend of Elk Avenue, by a book of Jewish folklore. The complexity of these and many other of Eron's characters will resonate to readers who embrace fiction concerned with life as it's actually lived and perceived. Eron writes with deep insight into his main players, though holding closely to their perspectives flattens the depiction of some of the other characters in their lives, especially the female ones, who often are objects of desire or projections of fantasies. These men don't fully see them. While thought-provoking and deeply concerned with the limits of our perceptions and self-knowledge, the collection frequently offers welcome, unexpected moments of humor, especially in the often boisterous dialogue that's often sprinkled with Yiddish. The muddled and sometimes painful self-reflection at the center of these stories, and their characters' occasional hard-fought realizations, create a fascinating window into life's big questions about who we are and how we should live. This incisive collection examines, through short fiction, pressing questions about the limits of self-knowledge. --BookLife Review

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