Happy New Years

(Paperback)

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Building on her success with The Hebrew Teacher, Israel's Jane Austin writes an epistolary novel about the limits and depth of women's friendship.

After emigrating to the United States in the mid-1960s, Leah maintains her connection to Israel by writing an annual letter on the Jewish New Year to her old friends from a women's teaching college. Composed of fifty-one letters penned between 1966 and 2016, the novel skillfully documents Leah's high hopes and deep disappointments, from relationships, marriage, and divorce to raising two children by herself, financial debt, and professional ups and downs. Leah rarely acknowledges the injustices she has had to overcome, but her letters turn increasingly introspective, ultimately exposing the secrets that shaped her trajectory from a naive but driven social climber to an independent woman at peace with herself.

This is an epistolary novel at its best, inviting the reader to play detective and read between the lines of Leah's insistently rosy portrayal of her life. As we forgive her small deceptions and gradually piece together her true circumstances, we are richly rewarded with the profound truths that Leah's self-constructed narrative reveals.

Reviews

"Brilliant and moving . . . The great miracle of this novel is the way that slowly, naturally, over decades, it leads to the emergence of an older woman who can reflect with wisdom on her life and its failures and successes . . . Easily one of the best works of Jewish American fiction produced this century." --The Jewish Review of Books"Provides the combination we've come to expect from Arad--of pleasure and sophistication--and confirms her central and unique status in the literary arena."--Haaretz

"A touching book about immigration, growing old, dreaming big, and the attempt to remain optimistic even with the nagging sense of having missed out on life."--Walla

Author Bio

Maya Arad is the author of eleven books of Hebrew fiction, as well as studies in literary criticism and linguistics. Born in Israel in 1971, she received a PhD in linguistics from University College London and for the past twenty years has lived in California where she is currently writer in residence at Stanford University's Taube Center for Jewish Studies.

Jessica Cohen shared the 2017 Man Booker International Prize with author David Grossman for her translation of A Horse Walks into a Bar. She has translated works by Amos Oz, Etgar Keret, Dorit Rabinyan, Ronit Matalon, Nir Baram, and others.