Product Description

After selling out of two successive print runs, Leora Skolkin-Smith's intoxicating novel about a young girl's personal and political discovery in 1960's Israel and Palestine is being re-released in a new edition by Glad Day Books. This new incarnation will include the author's afterword and dedication to her mentor Publisher and Editor of Glad Day Books with Robert Nichols, Grace Paley.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

"Edges" is set in a pre-1967 Israel, during the Cold War. Characters are drawn from Israel's long-forgotten past, members of the 1940's Haganah and Jewish underground who find themselves displaced amidst the chaotic and complex tensions of an Israel just beginning to modernize and expand.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #310094 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Victoria Zackheim, anthology, "For Keeps", "The Other Woman," writer, "The Bone Weaver"

"With EDGES, Leora Skolkin-Smith earns her place among the most gifted of contemporary American authors. The novel is a reminder that works of fiction can offer the depth, color, texture, passion of a fine painting and a great symphony. This is more than a coming-of-age story; it is a powerful and beautifully wrought account of passion and hope...for a girl and for a country."

from blurb, August 2004
"...Skolkin-Smith, in clear, burnished prose, fuses personal and political rifts into an exhilirating debut novel."

--Philip Graham

from blurb, August, 2004
"Edges is an elegant and moving novel. A provocative debut." —Katharine Weber

Customer Reviews

Original work
This is a very poetic and complex book, and not meant for a quick read, I think. And for me what was strong was the mother and daughter relationship and the relationship the geography had to do with the girl's budding sexuality, her identity, and inner landscape. But it not for everybody. Mainly because it doesn't strive to provide more of the standard political answers we are so used to when anyone writes about the Middle East. Instead it's about people, what they are as individuals and their desperate search for a personal identity against this backdrop which threatens to deprive them of their separate personhood. It is very, very sexual and not for tepid hearts and souls, you have to be sort of brave to face what Skolkin-Smith tells us about sexuality, mothers and daughters and the inner life of adolescents. But if you're willing to go into those depths it an immensely satisfying book which doesn't settle for simple questions or answers. And one of the best I've read in a long, long time.

From "Dovegrey Reader Scribbles"
Edges, O Israel O Palestine by Leora Skolkin-Smith, published by Glad Day Books which would seem to be an enterprise backed by the late Grace Paley,

'our particular purpose is to bridge the gap between imaginative literature and political articles and criticism which have been fixed under the labels of "Fiction" and "Non-Fiction." But the split has diminished literature and its usefulness to society. With these constraints writers find themselves engaged in a form of self-censorship that has to do both with artistic and formal considerations and what can be said.'

E_lss Centre stage, fourteen year old Liana Bialik who along with her mother and sister Ivy and following the suicide of her father, is returning to Jerusalem in 1963, thus interrupting a life growing up in the US.
This is her mother's homeland and as Ivy descends the steps from the plane sporting her badge declaring loudly PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON IS A DRUG ADDICT it's clear a clash of cultures is inevitable.
Except it wasn't as I anticipated, because in fact it's the Israeli culture that proves the more extrovert as their mother Ada quickly discards all inhibitions and throws herself back into the life she once knew. This is her homeland, physical, mental and spiritual, this is where her first family are and where she ultimately belongs and it takes her but a nano-second to roll down her stockings and start dancing. Ada's exuberance of course a complete surprise and cringe-makingly embarrassing to her adolescent daughters.
Liana has to find her own place in this troubled and divided land both as a daughter and a woman but also as a stranger, and set against a backdrop of rising military tensions and increasing danger this is never going to be simple.
Identity was never so hard-won as Liana's, but distracted by reclaiming her own persona, Ada unwittingly allows her daughter some space to do it. Space Liana may never have found in the US.
Infused with Israel-ness seems a ridiculous thing to say because how can I know? But somehow I felt I did understand Israel and as a country as much as a homeland. I could smell the land and feel the heat and the dust as well as the perils. However there is no mistaking the taste of the Jewish festivals celebrated in the household at One Metadulah Street as the family gather to mark the timeless and constant year-round observance of their faith.
Leora Skolkin-Smith was born in the US but spent her childhood travelling between New York and Israel and she has certainly soaked up a growing girl's view on these two contrasting edge to edge cultures, as well as those that border each other in the Middle East, her observation and detail breath life into this amazing little book. The writing is spontaneous and fresh and the dialogue crafted with such a natural feel that you hear it as you read.A commentator here tells me it will be a film and it should be a great one if true to the spirit of the book.
A small enough book to pass by next to all those might tomes shouting read me, but one to seek out and savour for sure.
It's been a vibrant and welcoming introduction as I set foot in Israel from my armchair."

--From Dovegrey Reader Scribbles, A British Literary Blog

I really enjoyed it...lyrical descriptions of the land
I really enjoyed the book. It's got a lot of tension and I felt I kept wanting to read, wanting to find out what was going to happen. The characters are totally alive and your descriptions of the land are so lyrical! It makes me want to ask--did this really happen to the author herself? So real! And at the same time surreal, suffused with the limited perceptions of a young girl. It made me think a bit of Ghost Dance, by Carole Maso. It is also about an odd relationship between a mother and daughter, told from a perspective skewed by the oddness.