Synopsis
A week before she's due to leave for Jerusalem, Hannah meets Raymond in a one night stand that quickly expands into a week-long passionate and surprisingly deep love affair. Hannah, committed to exploring her Jewish roots, and Raymond, a blond blue-eyed WASP, find themselves in a very unlikely relationship. This beautifully written novel raises the question: Does one's religion affect the demands of one's heart?
The New York Times - Meghan Daum
This is a slim novel, constructed on so small a scale that it occasionally comes close to suffocating from the postmodern fragmentation that is its chief stylistic conceit. Marche, who's only 29 years old, tends not to write fully rendered scenes, and instead lists the key players and events as if dictating notes to himself. But his minimalism is one of form, not content. The language he uses is so dazzling, so unsentimental, that the bones of the story become almost irrelevant. Besides, Marche isn't interested in telling an epic story. He's trying to sort through a series of contradictory moments over nine months in the lives of two people who, if they ''were a cocktail . . . would be two parts absence, one part presence.'' In so doing, he has produced a work that is both beautiful and confusing. In other words, an honest love story.