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A Wall of Light
By
Edeet Ravel
Israeli-born writer Edeet Ravel, a finalist for the Canadian Governor General's Literary Award for Ten Thousand Lovers, tenders another understated narrative jewel with A WALL OF LIGHT (HarperCollins, August 5, 2005). With elegant concision, Ravel unravels the story of three generations in a Tel Aviv family — from the 1950s to the present — as they wrestle with matters of the heart amid the turbulent, often violent climate of their emerging nation. .
At the center of the story is Sonya Vronsky, a thirty-two-year-old mathematics professor at the university. Sonya, who lost her hearing as a girl because of a hospital mishap, and later survived a violent assault while a student in college, now lives with her protective, older half-brother, Kostya, a doctor whose activist attorney wife was murdered. Despite these family tragedies, though, Sonya and Kostya have settled into a mostly contented, ordinary life. But on the morning of the August day that unfolds in A WALL OF LIGHT, Sonya senses a series of small, unexpected events, and she is seized by the inclination to shake things up. "On this remarkable day," she tells the reader at the outset, "I kissed a student, pursued a lover, found my father, and left my brother."
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