A Replacement Life (P.S. (Paperback)) - Softcover

Fishman, Boris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062287885 ISBN 13: 9780062287885

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2015

Synopsis

"A singularly talented writer makes his literary debut with this provocative, soulful, and sometimes hilarious story of a failed journalist asked to do the unthinkable: Forge Holocaust-restitution claims for old Russian Jews in Brooklyn, New York.Yevgeny Gelman, grandfather of Slava Gelman, "didn't suffer in the exact way" he needs to have suffered to qualify for the restitution the German government has been paying out to Holocaust survivors. But suffer he has--as a Jew in the war; as a second-class citizen in the USSR; as an immigrant to America. So? Isn't his grandson a "writer"?High-minded Slava wants to put all this immigrant scraping behind him. Only the American Dream is not panning out for him--Century, the legendary magazine where he works as a researcher, wants nothing greater from him. Slava wants to be a correct, blameless American--but he wants to be a lionized writer even more.Slava's turn as the Forger of South Brooklyn teaches him that not every fact is the truth, and not every lie a falsehood. It takes more than law-abiding to become an American; it takes the same self-reinvention in which his people excel. Intoxicated and unmoored by his inventions, Slava risks exposure. Cornered, he commits an irrevocable act that finally grants him a sense of home in America, but not before collecting a price from his family.A Replacement Life is a dark, moving, and beautifully written novel about family, honor, and justice"--

About this title

Review:

"A memorable debut by a wonderfully gifted young writer...Boris Fishman has written a beautifully nuanced, tender, and often very funny novel about conscience and familial loyalty that will linger long in the memory."--Joyce Carol Oates

"Boris Fishman fearlessly tackles the grandest subjects, among them the nature of honor and the transferability of suffering. That he succeeds this well, and with so much style and grace, marks him as a writer not only to watch but envy."--Tom Bissell

"A novel that works beautifully on many levels. It's about the compromises involved in telling any story...Boris Fishman finds a new way to negotiate these tensions, a new language, even as he sometimes shows how he does it, a little magic act all its own."--Arthur Phillips

"A REPLACEMENT LIFE is a hell of a book. Told with amazing virtuosity, fun and serious, funny and sad, profound and eminently readable, it will make you happy until it's over. And then you will be sad."--Darin Strauss

"With a sense of humor and a sense of tragedy, A REPLACEMENT LIFE explores a hidden New York...There's a touch of Gogol here, a touch of Babel, a touch of Dostoyevsky, but out of these materials Boris Fishman has fashioned something distinctively and triumphantly his own."--Brian Morton, author of STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING

"Boris Fishman's A REPLACEMENT LIFE is so strong in voice, humor, and compassion that it transcends fiction's limitations to become something wilder and more contained--like life. What a remarkable debut--true and resonant, humorous and real."--Hilton Als

"Mordantly funny and moving... Justice is eventually served in A REPLACEMENT LIFE along with plenty of black comedy, but the book is less about doing right or wrong than about where absolutes, moral or otherwise, do not apply ... impressive."--New York Times

"Fishman's firm yet light authorial hand, his gift for character and plot development, and his searing use of the English language belie his youth and his novice-novelist status. His witty dialogue and wry, believable descriptions leaven the dark, dense bread of the tale."--Chicago Tribune

"Beautifully written and occasionally quite funny...[a] complicated paradox of remaining loyal to one's community while moving bravely into a new world."--BookPage

"Delightful...though the subject matter is largely dark, when you least expect it there is also humor which comes up and bites you in a most pleasant way... A REPLACEMENT LIFE is a brilliant first novel by a talented writer."--Examiner.com

From the Back Cover:

Winner of the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award

Winner of the American Library Association's Sophie Brody Medal

Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award

A singularly talented writer makes his literary debut with this provocative, soulful, and sometimes hilarious story of a failed journalist asked to do the unthinkable: Forge Holocaust-restitution claims for old Russian Jews in Brooklyn, New York.

Yevgeny Gelman, grandfather of Slava Gelman, "didn't suffer in the exact way" he needs to have suffered to qualify for the restitution the German government has been paying out to Holocaust survivors. But suffer he has--as a Jew in the war; as a second-class citizen in the USSR; as an immigrant to America. So? Isn't his grandson a "writer"?

High-minded Slava wants to put all this immigrant scraping behind him. Only the American Dream is not panning out for him--Century, the legendary magazine where he works as a researcher, wants nothing greater from him. Slava wants to be a correct, blameless American--but he wants to be a lionized writer even more.

Slava's turn as the Forger of South Brooklyn teaches him that not every fact is the truth, and not every lie a falsehood. It takes more than law-abiding to become an American; it takes the same self-reinvention in which his people excel. Intoxicated and unmoored by his inventions, Slava risks exposure. Cornered, he commits an irrevocable act that finally grants him a sense of home in America, but not before collecting a price from his family.

A Replacement Life is a dark, moving, and beautifully written novel about family, honor, and justice.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0062287885
• ISBN 13: 9780062287885
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352