Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

200 Pages

Ratings Explanation

Violence:  Danzig’s father beat his mother.  Margot, Danzig’s older sister, commits suicide.  Danzig finds her body in the bathtub.  Danzig rejects Susan’s advances.  He drags her naked by the hair through broken glass.  He then hits her.  Susan later attempts suicide.  Yossi’s bus is blown up and he dies.

Sexual Content:   Lucy is a nude model at San Francisco’s Art Institute.  She refers to the modeling as, “Having sex from an even safer distance.”  Danzig has an affair with Andrea, a waitress.  Danzig has another affair, with Susan.  He has had countless affairs with students and models alike.

Adult Themes:  Danzig fathers a child with Andrea, and wants nothing to do with the child.

Synopsis

Once a prominent painter, Danzig shares his wisdom with students at San Francisco’s Art Institute while his own canvases remain empty.  When he meets Israeli-born Merav, the beautiful new model for his class, he senses she may reignite his artistic passion.  Merav moved to California to escape the danger and violence of the Middle East, yet she cannot outrun her fears about the past.  As the characters challenge one another.  Rosner lyrically uncovers their disparate upbringings, their creative awakenings, and their similarly painful, often catastrophic, love lives to propel them toward reconciliation, redemption, and revival in this “delicate, cleverly cantilevered” tale.

Rosner’s  prose is beautifully poetic.   I loved the theme of healing the wounds of history one person at a time.  “I believe that small movements in the direction of compassion can make a huge difference in the larger scale of humanity.”  Rosner

©2011 The Literate Mother