cover image THE PLACE WILL COMFORT YOU

THE PLACE WILL COMFORT YOU

Naama Goldstein, . . Scribner, $22 (211pp) ISBN 978-0-7432-5135-8

Set in Israel and suburban America, this funny, moving debut collection mines the rich complexities of cultural dislocation in the idiom of in between. "I know—I understand with the full feeling of living life—that you can be of one place and another, not at all the same," says the bilingual third-grade narrator of "The Conduct for Consoling." Goldstein, an American who grew up in Israel, writes eloquently of the longing for home, evoking the material differences between her two countries with a few telling details: a certain breakfast cereal, a prime-time television program or a tiled floor. America both entices and disturbs the Israeli children in "A Pillar of a Cloud," who glimpse it through a visiting cousin casually offering a Sloppy Joe sandwich to an Arab worker. In scenes like these, Goldstein depicts a loaded situation with unexpected originality through her artfully off-kilter syntax and whimsical characters, both insightful and self-deluded. In "A Verse in the Margins," Goldstein conjures the misguided high school teacher Mr. Durchschlag in a single sentence: "With every unclish wink to every blush of theirs the world revolved more steadily, the proper ratio of this to that restored." Even the most limited characters in these eight stories are likable: Shulee, the rebellious Israeli teen in "The Roberto Touch," remains sympathetic though she behaves badly on a school trip. As generous as it is unsentimental, this resonant collection captivates and provokes. Agent, Maria Massie at Witherspoon Associates. (May)

Forecast: The publisher compares Goldstein to Nathan Englander and Allegra Goodman, but with her fresh, inventive syntax she's more like a young Grace Paley. This original collection should find an audience with readers interested in literary short fiction and Is raeli and Jewish culture.