Short and bittersweet
Janet Barron
THE JEWESS: STORIES FROM BERLIN AND NEW YORK by Irene Dische
Bloomsbury, £14.99, pp. 213
At first glance, this appears to be an ominously worthy collection, redolent of angst and urban ghettoes. It turns out quite the opposite. Irene Dische is a warm and funny writer, and a quiet sense of laughter shines through her stories. They are mostly about people who have become culturally displaced, and whose closest relatives smother them with affection. In style they are close to the stories of John Cheever, mellow with inherent absurdity. In 'Portrait of a Defection', a mathematician from East Germany claims asylum in the West, cer- tain that a fur coat he smuggled in for his mother will be his safeguard for keeping her on the far side of customs control; but with an air of self-righteous martyrdom, mother goes with him, and his only chance of having his own life is gone forever.
These are very appealing short works, Which make the reader smile in recogni- tion, offering a collection of eccentrics who are entirely believable. Dische occasionally allows herself a joke against the genre, beginning one story 'Once upon a time', and calling another 'My Most Memorable Character', yet the cumulative effect is to 'flake the reader complicit in an insight into the lives she describes.
Dische gives away curiously little about herself, her writer's note saying only that she is an American who lives in Berlin. It seems part of her style to be quite so elusive, for her stance is that of an un- obtrusive but alert observer, recording What could almost be brief encounters in cafés, at once American and sharply Euro- pean. The strongest story is the last, `Mr Lustgarten Falls in Love', which tells of What happened 'When the maid moved in', and which has a superb twist in its tail. Altogether, these 14 stories make excellent st■mmer reading, something to be savoured With sunshine and chilled white wine. As always with Bloomsbury the book is beautifully produced, although at just Oyer 200 pages the price seems a bit high, but it is worth it for sheer enjoyment and the pleasure of exploring the Isherwoodian world which Irene Dische inhabits.
Previous page
