The Day My Mother Cried and Other Stories (Library of Modern Jewish Literature)

The lasting charm of William Kaufman’s stories lies in a delightful mix of personal incidents and observations set against an anchoring backdrop of cultural tradition. His new collection is filled with tales from his parent’s homeland in the Ukraine, his own childhood reminiscences, and his adult travels. We watch the young author forced alongside “every Jewish boy on the block” to emulate Yehudi Menuhin on a ten dollar violin with a moldy bow, until the boy is spared by an innate lack of talent and his father’s judgment on his concert: “Enough is enough is more than enough.” Kaufman is carefully attuned to the awkwardness of adulthood as well as that of early adolescence. In “Interlude in Bangkok” his narrator scours the city for a synagogue while pursued by a prostitute. Later he and a friend encounter Greta Garbo in a museum café and are too frightened to approach her. “I am not she,” intones the mysterious movie star, and in his own way Kaufman says that of himself in these stories, through an autobiographical narrator whose memories take on resonant, literary shapes in their retelling.