Not Quite Mainstream: Canadian Jewish Short Stories
Edited by Norman Ravvin
ISBN 0-88995-246-9
246 pages
Photograph courtesy of Edward Hillel
$18.95 CDN / $16.95 USD
Introduction
Not Quite Mainstream Stories brings together a substantial collection of Canadian Jewish short fiction, in a gathering of stories that fulfill the demands of the form with energy, grace, and often humour. But Not Quite Mainstream also provides a sense of the short story's development in Jewish Canada, from the early works, of Yaacov Zipper and Chava Rosenfarb (translated from Yiddish), to the recent works of young writers such as Cary Fagan, Claire Rothman, and Robyn Sarah. Writers better known as novelists, such as Matt Cohen and Mordecai Richler, and those better known for their poetry and journalism, including Tom Wayman, Ken Sherman, and Elaine Kalman Naves, fill out our sense of the tradition. The stories collected here are to be savoured for their craft and appreciated for the way they represent how we have addressed, avoided, or rethought Canadian Jewish identity.