#530 Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother’s Side-
Nathan Englander
Nathan is an apostate, someone who has renounced religion
and connection to their faith. Although it’s not as easy at that. This is a
story broken up in 63 sections. Nathan loses his girlfriend because he is
closed off about his past. Although his family is thoroughly Jewish he doesn’t
feel that long, deep connection. He feels his life is shallow in the shadow of
what should be a rich history.
“But what do you do if you’re American and have no family
history and all your most vivid childhood memories are only the plots of
sitcoms, if even your dreams, when pieced together, are the snippets of movies
that played in your ear while you slept?”
His girlfriend, a Bosnian on the other hand feels a strong
connection to her lineage.
“Her family tree is written into the endpapers of a bible
whose leather cover has worn soft as a glove. She was raised in the house in
which her mother was raised, and her mother’s mother, and in which, believe it
or not, her great-grandmother was born.”
As Nathan explores his family history he finds secrets,
lies, and hidden truths everywhere. The truth is sometimes hard to track down,
and maybe it should stay hidden in the past.
Notable Passage: “It’s not only the past that can be altered
and forgotten and lost to the world. It’s real time now. It’s streaming. The
present can be undone, too.”
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