Tovah Feldshuh narrates Drama of "Edges, O Israel, O Palestine" due for release in Winter, 2007
Added: (Sun Dec 17 2006)
Pressbox (Press Release) -
The novel “Edges, O Israel, O Palestine" by Leora Skolkin-Smith
and edited by Grace Paley will soon come to life in audio form.
Tovah Feldshuh narrates an original production due for release in Winter, 2007. The production was directed by Charles Potter, a three-time grammy award winner and director of Maya Angelou's audio poetry book. The project is produced by Peabody award-winner Marjorie Van Halteren, formerly a producer at WNYC and Symphony Space.
"EDGES takes the reader to an Israel before high walls formed a border, when, instead, metal wires hung "like hosiery lines" across the land. Liana Barish is fourteen years old when the suicide of her American father forces her mother, mourning, in despair back to her family--to Jerusalem where she grew up. For Liana it is the place where the powerful interdependence of mother and daughter--physical and spiritual--ends. It is the place of her sexual awakening."
--Grace Paley
"Edges is an elegantly written, quite moving novel that has a lot to say about love, identity, history and the meaning of nationality. The book is worth reading alone for its superb language, but it is gripping and unforgettable as well in its story telling and evocation of place and emotions. It is a wonderful novel by an author with a quite accomplished voice and style, one well deserving a wide and receptive audience. -Oscar Hijuelos, author of the Pulitzer-prize winning novel, "THE MAMBO KING SINGS SONGS OF LOVE"
"Edges is an elegant and moving novel. Leora Skolkin-Smith has that rare gift of the writer who can convey the sensibility — the essence of a place and its people — with precision and clarity. A provocative debut."
—Katharine Weber, NY Times book critic, author of TRIANGLE, LITTLE WOMEN, THE MUSIC LESSON
"Where, and how and to whom do we really belong? Skolkin's brilliant debut novel is a hypnotic meditation on the ever-changing boundaries of love and need. A coming of age story of the bond between a young American and her powerful mother, etched in a wartime Mideast as shifting and dangerous and mysterious as the Israeli desert."
—Caroline Leavitt, columnist, Boston Globe, author of GIRLS IN TROUBLE and COMING BACK TO ME
"Edges" is a dark and penetrating look at pre-1967 Israel and Palestine through the eyes of a 14 year old Liana Bialik. After her American father's suicide, Liana's Jerusalem-born mother decides to take Liana and her sister back to her homeland, where her family had lived for four generations. Once they get to Israel Liana, who feels overwhelmed and suffocated by her mother, begins to detach herself from her. She embarks on a mission of self-discovery to learn why her mother does not speak about her father and why he took his own life. Edges is well-written, powerful in both imagery and subject matter..."
-Jewish Book World, Spring 2006
"EDGES" is a novel told with restraint and poetic precision...memorable (for the) the sense of place that Ms. Skolkin-Smith has achieved -- the sunny and scary Jerusalem and countryside -- and the hope, love, hate and fatalism of the groups, Palestinian and Israeli, living amongst and apart from each other..."
-- Robert Whitcomb , "The Providence Journal".
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ms. Skolkin-Smith has received grants from The New York State Council on the Arts, The Department of Cultural affairs, The Millay Colony for the Arts, The Vermont Studio Center, and Art-Without-Walls. She was awarded a Teaching Fellowship for graduate work at Sarah Lawrence College where she holds a BA and MFA in writing. Recently awarded a PEN/Faulkner Writers-in-the Schools Award and Selected for the Miami International Book Festival, Ms. Skolkin-Smith’s novel “Edges” is in its second printing. The novel was also picked by "The Bloomsbury Review's 25th Anniversary Issue" as a "Favorite Book of the Last 25 Years."
"Edges, O Israel, O Palestine"
by Leora Skolkin-Smith, Edited by Grace Paley
Glad Day Books
June, 2005
ISBN 1-930180-14-4
Represented by Tim Seldes, Russell and Volkening Literary Agency