Weeping Susannah - Hardcover

Alona Kimhi was born in the Ukraine in 1966 and emigrated to Israel with her family at the age of six. She studied drama, and has worked as an actress, journalist, playwright and director. She published a volume of short stories, Lunar Eclipse in 1996. Weeping Susannah is her first novel, and rights have been acquired by publishers in ten countries.

At the outset of this affecting novel, Susannah Rabin's world does not extend far beyond the walls of the apartment she shares with her aging mother in Tel Aviv. Despite her artistic talent and her keen powers of observation, Susannah is an anxious, compulsive recluse at 33. Her mother successfully protects her from the volatile outside world, until they are faced with an unexpected houseguest. A handsome and vaguely dangerous cousin from America, the guest shakes up their regimented existence and makes a project of Susannah. As she gradually, inevitably falls in love with him and distances herself from her mother, many of her neuroses fall away, but the changes do not come without consequences of their own. The political turmoil of modern Israel provides an intriguing setting for the trials of this small collection of well-drawn characters, and Susannah's unique and very funny voice--think Dolores Price from Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone --sings clearly through an excellent translation from the original Hebrew. Carrie Bissey
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