The Briss - Softcover

Fiction. Chosen by Jim Bartley of the Toronto Globe as one of the Top 5 first-fiction books of 2009. There is a Jewish proverb that goes: "Grandchildren are your reward from God for not having murdered your children." And so THE BRISS begins, with Sammy, the father of two grown children he would like to choke the life out of. His daughter Marilyn has just ended an affair that should have been kept a secret. In the meantime, his younger son, Teddy, who had left months ago on a ten-day Birthright Israel tour, got himself mixed up with gush shalom Israelis who introduced him to a diaspora Palestinian woman visiting her ailing grandmother in Ramallah. Teddy falls in love with her, and, well, knocks her up. Sammy, who fought in Israel in '48 but moved back home to Winnipeg years ago, a move he has regretted, is forced into an angry struggle with his son that reveals all their unresolved emotional conflicts. A wildly entertaining and poignant novel, THE BRISS explores, on a personal level, family relationships, and on a political level, the continuing debate about Jewish identity and its connection to Israel and Palestine.