Sadness is a White Bird

Sadness is a White Bird by Moriel Rothman-Zecher, 274 pages.

The title gives it away that this is, ultimately, a sad book. Nimreen and Laith, Palestinian twins (adults, of course), and Jonathan, an Israeili man, become friends, close friends, more than friends, and then it all goes terribly wrong.

Letters to my Palestinian neighbor

Letters to my Palestinian neighbor / Yossi Klein Halevi, 207 pgs.

A set of letters from an Israeli author (who also wrote the Sophie Brody award winning Like Dreamers) talking to his very near neighbors, who are Palestinians who live literally on the other side of the hill that he lives on.  The letters are heart felt and talk about his personal history, the history of Israel and the Jewish people and the relationship with their Arab Palestinian neighbors. You can learn so much from this book, I know I did.  Wonderfully narrated by the author.

City of Secrets

City of Secrets by Stewart O'Nan, 194 pages.
O'Nan's sixteenth (?) novel takes place in post-World War II Jerusalem. Brand, a Latvian Jew who feels that he "accidentally" survived the Holocaust, after having been a prisoner of the Russians, then the Nazis, and then Russians again, has made it to Palestine with an assumed identity. He is working for Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary / resistance force has just put aside its differences with other like-minded groups, such as Irgun, to drive the British out of Palestine and form a Jewish state. But Brand is not sure how he feels about all of this. He is haunted by those he lost in the war, and haunted by the sense that he is not the man he used to think he was. When one of the members of his clandestine cell is betrayed, and Brand finds that standing by, doing nothing to save the man (not quite a friend, but almost) who is accused of the betrayal, is sickeningly reminiscent of his time in the camps.
An affecting, sad novel.

The Book of Stone / Jonathan Papernick 389 pp.

Matthew Stone is the grandson and son of a gangster and influential judge, respectively. Unlike his 'big man' forebears, Matthew has always felt himself a very small man, indeed. Unable to finish school, maintain relationships or mental health, his father's death sends Matthew into a downward spiral. His father has left him access to a large stash of funds which he may or may not have intended him to use to fund a group of Israeli terrorists functioning out of a cell in Brooklyn, and his father's former friends stalk Matthew in pursuit of the money. Very dark and atmospheric (Matthew never knows who to trust, and he is nearly always drunk, high, or self-mutilating), the story moves toward a grim end which the reader can never quite see coming, for which I give Papernick high marks. The author tried to say a lot here, about becoming a man, and specifically becoming a Jewish man weighted with history, and he didn't fully achieve it, but this was still an engrossing read.