JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
In Peter Orner’s new book, “Am I Alone Here? Notes on Living To Read and Reading To Live,” he admits that he reads in taquerias, at traffic lights and “in part, to get away from email.” Illustrated by the cartoonist Eric Orner, the author’s brother, the unusual and deeply personal book is being passed hand-to-hand…
Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge By Peter Orner Little, Brown, 208 pages, $16.99 Every seasoned author has overarching themes that he or she explores, to success or failure, across a series of books. Mediocrity and defeat — twin afflictions that beset the narrators in Peter Orner’s mournful and moving fiction — are worthy companions,…
Love and Shame and Love By Peter Orner Little, Brown, 448 pages, $24.99 Part epic, part bildungsroman, Peter Orner’s “Love and Shame and Love” is a refreshing departure from the shtetl nostalgia shtick that has come to typify contemporary American Jewish fiction. Orner’s characters are complex, but their quirks, like their Jewishness, are the stuff…
