Binnie Kirshenbaum - Böcker

Relates the story of a woman--aloof, rootless, married, Jewish, left-handed--who blithely breaks seven of the Ten Commandments as she searches for her roots and innocence. Reader's Guide available. Reprint.

A collection of short stories takes place in New York City, the former East Germany, and Virginia and is set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the Kennedy era, the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and the renovation of Ellis Island. Reader's Guide available. Reprint.

Born in New York in 1963, historian Hester Rosenfeld—very American and marginally Jewish—goes to Munich to research the life of Heinrich Falk and becomes his mistress. Born in Berlin in 1943, raised in the ruins of defeat by a generation of "murderers and cowards," Professor Falk is neither infamous nor famous—he is simply the German Everyman. Hester believes his life story could make for an important contemporary historical document—kitchen table history. Heinrich is married (four times, twice to his current wife) and has four daughters. But madly in love with Hester, adultery is nothing new to him. As he assists her in her note-taking—about him and his family, about German history—she often suspects Heinrich is covering up something. Was his brother really a Werewolf, a Nazi militiaman who vowed to continue fighting after the war's end? What kind of gas company did his mother work for? And what exactly did his father do during those years?Yet Hester has her secrets, too, and the longer she remains in Germany the harder it is to keep them concealed. As she uncovers more of the Falk family's possible connection to Nazism, she finds herself reexamining her feelings about her own parents and her complicated attraction to Heinrich. As the lovers' intimacy deepens beyond the erotic, each suspects the other of hiding something about the past.Called a "rare and remarkable writer" by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham, Kirshenbaum has written a searing novel about history's unforgettable legacy and its continuing impact.

Meet Lila Moscowitz, a smart-mouthed, Jewish American beauty with a voracious appetite for sex, a remarkable talent for outrageous lies, and an unerring knack for screwing up her life. An accomplished poet, renowned for writing "smut and filth in terza rima," she goes about her life in Pure Poetry with enough attitude and verve to win your heart forever. But since fleeing the all-consuming passion of her marriage to Max, the sexy German, she can no longer compose so much as a couplet; ghosts have taken over her Greenwich Village apartment, and the contrast between her feelings for her present lover and her former husband is breaking her heart. And neither her best friend, Carmen, nor her cross-dressing analyst, Leon, is able to soothe her angst over her impending thirty eighth birthday, an occasion fraught with a thirty-seven year tradition of emotional devastation. But time waits for no woman, and the dreaded birthday does bring insight: Love can be undone by the same desires that nurture it. Lila knows that she has got to take action, and in doing so she comes to realize some startling truths about herself, her capacity for love, and the nature of true freedom. Binnie Kirshenbaum's voice has been acclaimed by critics and readers alike. Already a bestselling author in Germany, Kirshenbaum demonstrates a brilliant maturity in Pure Poetry. Not since Erica Jong's Fear of Flying has a novel so captured a woman's heart and desires. Readers will cheer Pure Poetry for its heady mix of humor and sadness, and for its slyly unsettling visions of modern life.