Description
Find more from this author on:
About the author:
Uvi writes across a variety of genres: My Own Voice, The White Piano, and Apart From Love (literary fiction), The Music of Us and Dancing with Air (romance), The David Chronicles, Rise to Power, A Peek at Bathsheba, and The Edge of Revolt ((historical fiction), A Favorite Son (biblical fiction), Home (poetry), Twisted (horror) Now I Am Paper and Jess and Wiggle (children’s book.)
What inspired you to write your book?
I modeled the heroine, Anita, as the-opposite-of-me. She was to become a bold and spontaneous spirit, anything but repressed; a ‘distant sister’ to Eliza Doolittle, stuck somewhere in the middle of the play, a place where she has already acquired a lot of new vocabulary, but has not managed yet to shake off her grammar mistakes. Anita, at this point, is a work-in-progress. And, she tends to use the simplest, shortest words she can find, because they are the most direct. I totally share this with her! Other writers search for the most literary words, thinking it would make them sound highly intelligent, but in fact it distances them from the heart and guts of the reader.
Here is a short sample from the book:
About a year ago I sifted through the contents of my suitcase, and was just about to discard a letter, which my father had written to me some time ago. Almost by accident my eye caught the line, I have no one to blame for all this but myself, which I had never noticed before, because it was written in an odd way, as if it were a secret code, almost: upside down, in the bottom margin of the page, with barely a space to allow any breathing.
The words left some impression in my memory. I almost wished he were next to me, so I could not only listen to him, but also record his voice saying that.
I imagined him back home, leaning over his desk, scrawling each letter with the finest of his pens with great care, as if focusing through a thick magnifying glass. The writing was truly minute, as if he had hated giving away even the slightest hint to a riddle I should have been able to solve on my own. I detested him for that. And so, thinking him unable to open his heart to me, I could never bring myself to write back. In hindsight, that may have been a mistake.
Even so, I am only too happy to agree with him: the blame for what happened in our family is his. Entirely his. If not for his actions ten years ago, I would never have run away to Firenze, to Rome, to Tel Aviv. And if not for his actions a couple of weeks ago, this frantic call for me to come back and see him would never have been made.
And so I find myself standing here, on the threshold of where I grew up, feeling utterly awkward. I knock, and a stranger opens the door. The first thing that comes to mind: what is she doing here? The second thing: she is young, much too young for him. The third: her hair. Red.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.