| Bill Gladstone, Special to the Canadian Jewish News Monday, November 4, 2013 The Newcomers Lily Poritz Miller Sumach/Three O’clock Press Very few novels have been written about the Jewish experience in South Africa – and yet, astonishingly, only four years ago another Canadian novelist produced a novel that delved into the same setting and milieu and featured South African Jewish characters originally from Lithuania. Toronto-based writer Poritz Miller’s debut novel In a Pale Blue Light focuses on Libka Hoffman, a Cape Town-born daughter of Lithuanian immigrants who finds herself, in the 1940s, at odds with South African society. Libka cannot accept South Africa’s racial laws and her innocent friendships mark her as a social outcast. Poritz Miller has followed up with a second novel, The Newcomers. The book again focuses on Libka after she and her family relocate to a small American town in New England. The family saga now treads into the postwar era, after the devastation of their loved ones back in Lithuania. Although not nearly as daring stylistically as Bonert [Kenneth Bonert’s The Lion Seeker], Poritz Miller creates realistic and memorable characters, and weaves a gripping tale that ultimately focuses on Libka’s romantic and life choices: will she settle for a dull, traditional life partner whom she doesn’t love or perhaps escape to some unknown future that seems impossible to envision? Poritz Miller reads from The Newcomers at the Barbara Frum Library, 20 Covington Rd., Toronto on Nov. 13, 7 to 8:15 p.m. She will also be interviewed by author Ayelet Tsabari at a book launch at Ben McNally Books, 366 Bay St., Nov. 28, 6 to 8 p.m. |
