Apart From Love

Apart From Love

Apart From Love

Apart From Love

Paperback

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Overview

Apart from Love contains two threads, volume I and II of Still Life with Memories, woven together (along with two new chapters) around the same events in 1980, when Ben returns to meet his father, Lenny, and his new wife, Anita. It is then that he discovers a family secret.

My Own Voice (volume I of Still Life with Memories):
Ten years ago, when she was seventeen, Anita started an affair with Lenny, in spite of knowing that he was a married man. Now married to him and carrying his child, she finds herself condemned to compete with Natasha's shadow, the memory of her brilliance back in her prime, before she succumbed to early-onset Alzheimer's. Despite Anita's lack of education, her rough slang, and what happened to her in the past, Lenny tries to transform her. He wants her to become Natasha.
Faced with his compelling wish, and the way he writes her as a character in his book, how can Anita find a voice of her own? And when his estranged son, Ben, comes back and lives in the same small apartment, can she keep the balance between the two men, whose desire for her is marred by guilt and blame?

The White Piano (volume II of Still Life with Memories):
Coming back to his childhood home after years of absence, Ben is unprepared for the secret, which is now revealed to him: his mother, Natasha, who used to be a brilliant pianist, is losing herself to early-onset Alzheimer's, which turns the way her mind works into a riddle. His father has remarried, and his new wife, Anita, looks remarkably similar to Natasha-only much younger. In this state of being isolated, being apart from love, how will Ben react when it is so tempting to resort to blame and guilt?"In our family, forgiveness is something you pray for, something you yearn to receive-but so seldom do you give it to others."
Behind his father's back, Ben and Anita find themselves increasingly drawn to each other. They take turns using an old tape recorder to express their most intimate thoughts, not realizing at first that their voices are being captured by him.These tapes, with his eloquent speech and her slang, reveal the story from two opposite viewpoints.
What emerges in this family is a struggle, a desperate, daring struggle to find a path out of conflicts, out of isolation, from guilt to forgiveness.

What's in a name:
The title Apart From Love comes from a phrase used in the story:

After a while I whispered, like, "Just say something to me. Anything." And I thought, Any other word apart from Love, 'cause that word is diluted, and no one knows what it really means, anyway.
Anita to Lenny

Why, why can't you say nothing? Say any word-but that one, 'cause you don't really mean it. Nobody does. Say anything, apart from Love.
Anita to Ben

For my own sake I should have been much more careful. Now-even in her absence-I find myself in her hands, which feels strange to me. I am surrounded-and at the same time, isolated. I am alone. I am apart from Love.
Ben

Do you like historical fiction about the 20th century, especially when it is tinged with romance and wrapped in a family saga? Then this series, Still Life with Memories, is for you.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780984993208
Publisher: Uvi Poznansky
Publication date: 02/15/2012
Series: Still Life with Memories Bundle , #1
Pages: 368
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.82(d)
Age Range: 16 Years

Read an Excerpt

About a year ago I sifted through the contents of my suitcase, and was just about to discard a letter, which my father had written to me some time ago. Almost by accident my eye caught the line, I have no one to blame for all this but myself, which I had never noticed before, because it was written in an odd way, as if it were a secret code, almost: upside down, in the bottom margin of the page, with barely a space to allow any breathing.

The words left some impression in my memory. I almost wished he were next to me, so I could not only listen to him, but also record his voice saying that.

I imagined him back home, leaning over his desk, scrawling each letter with the finest of his pens with great care, as if focusing through a thick magnifying glass. The writing was truly minute, as if he had hated giving away even the slightest hint to a riddle I should have been able to solve on my own. I detested him for that. And so, thinking him unable to open his heart to me, I could never bring myself to write back. In hindsight, that may have been a mistake.

Even so, I am only too happy to agree with him: the blame for what happened in our family is his. Entirely his. If not for his actions ten years ago, I would never have run away to Firenze, to Rome, to Tel Aviv.

And if not for his actions a couple of weeks ago, this frantic call for me to come back and see him would never have been made.

And so I find myself standing here, on the threshold of where I grew up, feeling utterly awkward. I knock, and a stranger opens the door. The first thing that comes to mind: what is she doing here? The second thing: she is young, much too young for him. The third: her hair. Red.

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