[.ca] Beyond the Pale (ISBN 155192613X)

From Amazon.com:
Elana Dykewomon's Lambda Award-winning novel Beyond the Pale announces itself to the world with an infant's scream--"a new voice, a tiny shofar announcing its own first year." The midwife attending this birth is Gutke Gurvich, a half-Jew with different colored eyes and a gift for seeing into the spirit world. Beyond the Pale is Gutke's story, detailing her odyssey from a Russian shtetl to a comfortable Manhattan brownstone. But, as Dykewomon puts it, "Whenever you tell the story of one woman, inside is another," and this rich, multilayered novel is also the story of Chava Meyer, the baby girl Gutke delivered that day, as well as the story of the important women in both of their lives: mothers, sisters, neighbors, lovers, friends. After seeing her mother raped and killed during a particularly vicious progrom in her native village of Kishinev, Chava immigrates to America. There, on Manhattan's Lower East Side, both she and Gutke find themselves involved in the nascent labor union and suffrage movements. Dykewomon has clearly done her research here, and Beyond the Pale presents a beautifully detailed account of life among turn-of-the-century immigrant Jews, from classes at the Henry Street Settlement House to the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Through the lens of several lesbians' lives, Dykewomon draws a portrait of an entire Diasporan community living through the terror and uncertainties of both Russian progroms and life in the New World.

a beautiful book:
Beautifully told. Please refer to Jewett62's review, she really says it all. I just needed to add my 5-star rating!

So much to learn:
I finished Beyond the Pale more than 4 weeks ago, yet it is still resonating within me. The author's writing style is wonderfully rich. Her love of language is obvious as she writes quite poetically. I am neither Jewish nor a lesbian, however I thoroughly enjoyed this book. In many, many ways it is a great educational experience that I would recommend to anyone.

Just Beautiful:
Amazing story about amazing women. Also about the Jewish identity. The author mentions that she wanted to tell a story of Jewish persecution outside the Holocaust, to show that it was not an isolated event but the result of a worlwide hatred and she succeeded completley. This is a book that I felt brought my heritage, both as a woman who likes women and the daughter of a Jewish man into sharp relief, but I'd reccommend it to anyone, for the writing and the stories that need to be told that are braided into it.

Endurance, love, and stalwart courage:
Opening in the early years of the twentieth century, Beyond The Pale by Elana Dykewomon is the engaging story of Gutke Gurvich and Chava Meyer -- two Russian Jewish women who go through hardship. Chava loses her parents to the brutality of a Russian pogrom, and then both women immigrate to New York City, where they find a new definition of cruelty awaits. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire figures prominently in this award-winning historical novel which provides the reader with a superbly written tale of endurance, love, and stalwart courage.

Beyond the Pulp:
Elana uses the themes of love, loss, family, tradition, and religion to weave a novel that tackles life's core issues and illuminates several historical time-periods. This book does not use the ho-hum traps most "love stories" employ to keep the reader from figuring out that the plot is recycled. The narration is poetic and the dialogue fresh. The characters are complex women, identifiable and yet unpredictable. While making the lesbian characters and their "culture" the central focus of the story, Elana incorporates the families, friends, and general society into the plot beautifully. Even they seem as real as your own mother and neighborhood Rabbi. The historical settings, of both Russia during the Pogroms and early industrial America, give the book great depth. There is no guilt in the pleasure of this novel.