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by Amanda Sthers
A witty, heartwarming, and heart-wrenching epistolary novel about a dysfunctional family - led by a Jewish pig farmer in Israel - struggling to love and accept each other.
As comic as it is deeply moving, Holy Lands chronicles several months in the lives of an estranged family of colorful eccentrics. Harry Rosenmerck is an aging Jewish cardiologist who has left his thriving medical practice in New York - to raise pigs in Israel. His ex-wife, Monique, ruminates about their once happy marriage even as she quietly battles an aggressive illness. Their son, David, an earnest and successful playwright, has vowed to reconnect with his father since coming out. Annabelle, their daughter, finds herself unmoored in Paris in the aftermath of a breakup.
Harry eschews technology, so his family, spread out around the world, must communicate with him via snail mail. Even as they grapple with challenges, their correspondence sparkles with levity. They snipe at each other, volleying quips across the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and Europe, and find joy in unexpected sources.
Holy Lands captures the humor and poignancy of an adult family striving to remain connected across time, geography, and radically different perspectives on life.
"Starred Review. This is a book you can read in an afternoon, but it'll stick with you for much longer than that. Comic, moving, and occasionally profound, Sthers' novel is a delight." - Kirkus
"This moving novel manages a delicate balance between humor and tenderness among a family incapable of interacting without rancor." - Publishers Weekly
"As each articulate, conflicted, and ardent character endures life-altering experiences, Sthers incisively and provocatively questions crucial matters of religion, morality, inheritance, compassion, and love." - Booklist
"Holy Lands is a subtle balance of originality and emotion. [There are] as many astonishing stories ... as there are moments of emotion, doubt, and love. Between exchanges of acerbic humor, Amanda Sthers reveals, with rhythm and reserve, each and everyone's flaws." - Direct Soir (France)
"Drip[s] with a charming Jewish humor ... A thoughtful and hilarious novel." - L'Avenir (France)
"A truly funny book: a series of hilarious correspondences undertaken by very colorful characters ... This rhythmic and lucid novel is made to devour." - Roman (France)
"This touching novel makes you want to recapture the present with love." - Psychologies (France)
"Sthers is an expert at crafting dysfunctional families that remain touching and relatable. With Holy Lands, she's penned an irreverent and endearing reminder that blood is thicker than water." - Karen Tanabe, author of The Gilded Years
"With eloquent Jewish humor, ironic taunts, familial reprimands, and cries from the heart each of the letters that form this gripping novel reveals a new secret, or asks a new question – about erotic love, friendship, religion, connection... This book reminds us how intense, even pungent, all our letters, postal or electronic, should be." - Grace Dane Mazur, author of The Garden Party
This information about Holy Lands was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Amanda Sthers was born in Paris and lives in Los Angeles. She is the bestselling author of ten novels; this is her American debut. She is also a playwright, screenwriter, and director. Her debut English-language film, Madame, will be released in America in March 2018. In 2011, the French government named her a Chevalier (Knight) in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the highest honor it bestows on artists, for her significant and original contributions to the literary arts.
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