BOOKS AND REVIEWS
Light Fell - synopsis
The sumptuous meal Joseph Licht prepares in his Tel Aviv beachfront
penthouse is even better organized than his customary elegant dinner
parties, but then his guests are more special than usual: in honor of
his own fiftieth birthday, Joseph will host his five grown sons and his
new daughter-in-law for the entire Sabbath. It is the first time the
family will be reunited in twenty years, since the day Joseph left
behind his entire life – wife Rebecca, sons, father, the religious
moshav where he grew up – in favor of a riveting affair with his
soulmate, illui Yoel Rosenzweig, the genius rabbi of his generation.
Their love affair has long since ended, but its echoes reverberate over
twenty years and into the lives of Joseph, Rebecca, and their sons in
ways none of them could have predicted. In this novel of desire and
need, of choices and consequences, no one is unaffected.
Light Fell comprises four sections:
In "Promise", the short opening section, the reader meets Joseph Licht
early Friday morning on the 1st of March 1996, as he readies his home –
and himself – for the arrival of his grown children. "Love" takes the
reader back to 1976, when a forbidden love pried Joseph away from his
family and the religious life in which he had been raised. The last two
sections return to 1996. In "Khol" the various family members make their
way – or not – to Tel Aviv, and "Kodesh" is the reunion itself.
Excerpt of "Promise"
Advance praise for Light Fell:
"In his exquisite, marvelously peopled and extraordinarily moving
debut novel, Evan Fallenberg gives us, among other treasures, a uniquely
drawn protagonist…Light Fell helps illuminate, to the great satisfaction
of the reader, the ever-complex human condition, the mysteries of desire
and, when we ourselves grant it, the astonishing power of forgiveness."
-- Aryeh Lev Stollman, author of The Far Euphrates and The
Illuminated Soul
"Light Fell weaves a complex and moving tapestry of a family worn
thin and unraveled by a father's choice. At the heart of Fallenberg's
powerful novel are the difficult questions of love and responsibility to
ourselves and those we love. Light Fell refuses to stop at easy
resolutions; instead, it deftly and knowingly honors the overlapping
layers of family, sexuality and faith."
-- Victoria Redel, author of The Border of Truth and Loverboy
"LIGHT FELL illuminates all the complexities, the contradictions, and
the collisions of faith, family, and passion. With this story of an
Israeli man-- a professor, a husband, a father -- who falls in love with
a rabbi, Evan Fallenberg has written an honest and brave book."
-- Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of An Almost Perfect Moment
