White Lies
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
White Lies is the eloquent story of one woman’s narrow escape from the confusion of her time. With insight and humor, White Lies follows Jamaica’s struggle for survival and integrity in an age of anxiety as she tries to reconcile herself to the overwhelming inauthenticity she feels in the face of her mother and father’s lives. Dr. and Mrs. Just came to America from the death camps of Europe and secluded themselves in the Bible Belt, determined to shield their daughters from the horror they had survived. They wanted to live and to forget—but that wasn’t always possible. Sometimes the fierceness and the pain were revealed but never explained. Only with the unintentional assistance of an intimate stranger does Jamaica begin to grasp how her parents were able to make peace with their past.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jamaica Just, the main character in this first novel by the movie critic for the Wall Street Journal, is a young feature writer for the fictional New York Observer and is married to wholesome, affectionate Sammy. Named for the part of Queens, N.Y., in which she was conceived, Jamaica seems to lead an enviable lifeat least others tell her she doesbut she suffers from a listless guilt that derives from being the child of Holocaust survivors. ("I'm a nothing, a cipher,'' she says. ``You think I could have lasted a minute in Auschwitz? I'm a weak-kneedstet no comma lily-livered nothing.'') Most of the narrative consists of Jamaica's ruminations on her childhood, her conflicting feelings for her parents, her concern for the homeless, her contempt for her sleazy boss. There are also references to various story assignments (a brief excerpt from one about growing up in a Holocaust survivor's family is the most effective writing in the book) and some inside Journal allusions and other odd jokes. The focus here is Jamaica's obsessive self-pity, which doesn't wane until the last page of the book, when from an unlikely source she learns about a tragic wartime event that explains her father's frequent silent rages. Unfortunately, the cathartic moment comes late and is described in typically cliched fashion.
