Yudl: A Novel and Selected Short Stories

(Paperback)

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Description

Set in 1920s Chicago, the short novel YUDL follows its eponymous protagonist, a middle-aged editor at a left-leaning newspaper. Yudl and his wife want to become landlords, purchasing a vacant lot and hiring an acquaintance, aptly named Mason, to oversee the construction of their future apartment building. However, delays in the construction leave Yudl and his family without a home, forcing them to stay with Mason until the construction is finally complete. Told with wry wit and a masterful sensibility for metaphor, the story explores the immigrant experience in the US.

Reviews

The early immigration of Jews to America is almost forgotten now but there was a time when Yiddish/American culture was an important patch in the quilt we know as America. What is left is the wonderful Yiddish storytelling tradition that is also now being somewhat forgotten. The American dream here is depicted as both rewarding and fearful and 'the promise of freedom and prosperity is accompanied by anxiety, guilt and regret'."Reviews by Amos

"Throughout this collection, Silberts photographic experience adds light and shadow to her settings, while her minute observation of smell helps to re-create 1920s America. This is a slow-paced, thoughtful collection with elegant prose and ironic overtones."Historical Novel Society

Author Bio

LAYLE SILBERT (1913-2003) grew up in Chicago in a Russian immigrant household. She made a career as a photographer, mostly of writers like friend Nelson Algren, and had more than thirty exhibits in the US and internationally. She wrote poems and a handful of personal essays, but primarily considered herself a writer of short-fiction, publishing hundreds of stories in literary magazines throughout her life. She is the author of a previous story collection, The Free Thinkers (Seven Stories Press, 2000).