Early Reviews + Rachel Newton: specificity, nurture, and the open-endedness of respect

The new releases can’t come fast enough. While there’s enough time to Yom Tov that you’re excused if you’ve forgotten about it, today we’re focused on what’s new. Fault Lines is a new short story collection from debut author Rachel Newton (of Family First fame) featuring layered and nuanced stories that bring vibrant life and depth to unique characters and settings on the edge of society. Plus, four new fiction titles that will set the tone for the season.

How does the short story format restrict you? How does it free you?

Short story writing can feel restrictive with the limited word count. But it forces the writer to fine-tune and distill the conflict, the dilemma, and the point that needs to be made. Can you tell a story in a thousand words? A hundred words? Yes you can, I’ve done flash fiction too (There are also two 1000-word stories in the book). The six-word story attributed to Hemingway - “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” A story right there! Was it happy, was it sad? That’s for the reader to imagine. The writer is limited in the short story form - you can’t develop too much of a side plot, or multiple characters, but you can often pack a far more powerful punch that way.

Nuance is hard. Your stories are refreshing in how much they respect their reader with emotional and intellectual nuance, where you grapple with emotions and experiences without trying to force them into a black-and-white rubric. What do you hope readers will experience as they read through the twists and turns of the gray area?

Nuance is easier in short stories, because part of respecting a reader’s intelligence is leaving things open.  With a novel, most details get wrapped up and there’s less room for open-ended threads. But in a short story, the ending isn’t the point. I remember readers asking me about Unleashed: What really happened to Zeesy? But that’s not the point of the story at all! 

Many stories within frum literature are kind of chick-lit. I sometimes read a story and can't remember it from yesterday to today. It was cute and nice and made me feel good, but is that respecting the reader's intelligence? I’m not saying there's no place for chick-lit. I just think that there are people who are looking for something deeper. I try to write a story that can be understood at face level so that the average person looking for a light, feel-good read will enjoy it. But for those looking for it, there will always be more to peel back. 

Many of the stories in Fault Line are exotically different, and you drive the plot home through characters on the edges of society. How do you balance the uniqueness of a character or backstory with the relevance that helps readers find themselves within a story? Do you think engaging details can infringe on resonance? 

Authors want readers to imagine themselves in the story. So they assume their story has to feature a regular street, a regular car. That’s a trend in secular literature also, not to use any car models, any brands whatsoever, etc., because things change and it can alienate a reader. There is comfort in things we know. But we’re all human, and we can always find something to identify with in other people - no matter where they are or what they look like, no matter how different they seem... We share so much more than we think. We all feel pain, fear, love, happiness. To quote Abie Rottenberg, “We are not so different, you and I”. 

Frum literature is such a small niche comparatively, and personally, I feel that there's not enough interesting material. I like to read about different times, eras, and places. If I'm taking you on a journey, why not take you somewhere interesting? The interesting settings or details can sometimes add a layer of distance for the reader which might not seem like a good thing. But that means that instead of confronting the reader head-on with a message or emotion, they can take it in from a more objective point of view with the space to examine a message they may never have been open to receive had it been set closer to home. 

Let’s dive deeper and talk about some of the stories. At the time of its publication in Family First, Mountains Around Jerusalem drew controversy. A story about a girl forced to abandon her dream of living in Eretz Yisrael, it touches on a lot of the messages we tell ourselves and the messages we’re told. As someone who’s made aliyah herself, what drove you to write this story, and what did you make of the response? 

What drove me to write this story was hearing from plenty of people having a hard adjustment to living in Israel but who feel too guilty to voice those feelings. They’re living a life that’s most people's dream, but can’t get used to many parts of it. People don't know how hard it is. For example, I've been here for many years and still can’t get used to the kids coming home every day at 1:30. I have a friend who told me, “I never would have made aliyah had I known how hard it would be.” But there’s no voice for that. 

We have to be so, so careful about dibbas ha’Aretz, though.   It’s a very real halachic issue. The rabbinical board at Mishpacha actually pulled the story the week it was meant to go to print. The Rav was concerned that the story was painting too negative of a picture - even though that’s what Mimi was experiencing in her personal life, and not a commentary on Eretz Yisrael. (The coming home at 1:30pm is a governmental thing, not related to the Land itself!). Together with Bassi Gruen, then-editor of Family First, we worked with the Rav for a month until everyone was happy. Even so, I do not think they expected this backlash.

A common thread across multiple stories is the narrow lens we see the world through, and what it takes to break past that. You use extremes to demonstrate this in stories like Safety in Numbers, Blinders, and Tremors, all featuring characters who bump against a wall when their narrow lens can not capture enough. Can you talk about some of these characters and this self-definition based on personality or environment?

Many people are afraid to delve into another option. Life is happening to them; they are not happening to life. And sometimes it’s as simple as shining a light and something suddenly clicks subconsciously and everything looks different.

I have a background in psychology and marriage and family counseling. Of course this shift is a process. But in the short story format, especially within a magazine, you have to stick to a certain character development arc. So you don't have time to develop what would happen, for example, if a character would go to therapy. In real life, no one has just one or two sessions and suddenly sees the light, and changes their whole life around in one go because of it. Having said that,  often something happens that makes you stop and say, “Hey, I may have to look at this differently. Maybe all the things I’ve believed till now aren’t necessarily true.”

Sleighted and Irreplaceable are both deeply layered stories that are so different in tone, but similar in theme. One thing I think they’re both about is how foundational our pasts are within us, how difficult it can be to separate the solidified past with the present, and how durable those foundations are. What did you have in mind for one or both of these stories?

One of the areas of psychology that most fascinate me is intergenerational patterns and those formative years. They're called formative because they are the years that form us into who we are. There’s nature versus nurture. Who and what we are for the first 20-25 years is not down to us; we have no agency. But many of us continue to sail into our 30s, 40s, or 50s without realizing where our behaviors are from, and that we have the agency to work on them.

In Sleighted, Zehava’s father hasn't changed in nature, he left Yiddishkeit. She has to work through her relationship with him - seeing her father as he is now, but knowing that what he gave her as a child, that which formed her, is not replaceable. So that means she has to work through “Whoever he is now superimposed onto the specter of the man who walked away, covering up the hero he always was…” - and use new tools to change that relationship and herself. She is not the person she once was, either. She’s married, a mother. And I turned it around, in a way, so that at the end of the story she is the strong parental figure.

Irreplaceable is so much more complex. Nava has a relationship with her sister.  She has a relationship with a woman she wants to like, but now can't stand because of who she became. And she has her father changing. So who is she? She was formed by her non-present father and sick mother. But eventually, she has to meld her past with her present new situation. We are all going to end up being a mix. Here we come across the nature vs. nurture issue, and maybe resilience -  how the two sisters survived their shared childhood experiences together, but still ended up as two very different adults. We can't turn our backs on the past, however much we'd like to. But we can have more agency.

Was Irreplaceable the most emotionally complex story you've written? 

I knew it was a heavy topic and hammered out the plot a lot before I sat down to write. Like many of the stories, there are a lot of layers. But for me as a writer, no, it did not cut into me more specifically than my other stories. But I know it hit a lot of people deeply.

I only write stories I feel strongly about, which means I have lots of plots dotted around my desktop. Some are there for 2-3 years until I think of a slant that will make it more personal, or an angle or extra layer. Sometimes it's just a matter of changing from past to present, and suddenly it's just there. But as a rule I write about  characters or  dilemmas that I feel strongly about. So I can't specifically pick on one single story that affected me more than others because I really do feel all of them very deeply.

One example where we see that is Venn. Venn is a story about giving up on our opinions for the sake of those we love, but it also tackles stigma, and our societal discussion of stigma. It’s a story that very much feels like it is a product of this moment. How did you piece this story together, and what message do you think it shares?

I actually didn’t start off with the mental health angle, but with the issue of secrets. What happens if you have a shared secret which you feel is healthy to share, but the other person doesn't want to? What happens when there are different ways of looking at things, and you are both right? What happens if there's a couple where one has a secret and isn’t willing to share and the other wants to? 

I was considering the secret to be cancer, because I wasn't sure I wanted to touch mental health; it’s a big responsibility. But I think as a community we’ve made huge strides in transparency and sharing when it comes to physical illnesses like cancer…which still can’t be said for mental issues. As you're saying, it's a product of the moment, which I think is very unfortunate. We're trying to break the stigma for 15-20 years, and we've still not managed to break it. People struggling with these issues are still worried about how they'll be perceived.  Even with all the information available on the topic, many people still believe there's a way to just snap out of it. On the other hand, the secular world is talking about mental health all day right now. Every person will use that as the go- free card for anything. So I wanted to bring both sides of the story. 

You've done a lot of short stories. You've done essays. What's holding you back from writing something long form?

I do a lot of nonfiction, but you’ll probably never know it’s me because I’ve written under many pseudonyms for Mishpacha and other  publications. I've also done humor and co-authored two books with a friend, Don’t Ask for a Hot Dog and The Hot Dog's Revenge. Those are just light and  really fun.

The level of research for a novel intimidates me. I’m a purist and a stickler for detail. Even for short stories, I research and research any place I write about, down to what time sunrise takes place in Lisbon in the winter. You may have seen Zisi Naimark mentioned in the Acknowledgements of Fault Lines. With Irreplaceable, she composed an entire Powerpoint about how the house and the vase would look. In Fare Exchange, a friend in New York helped me map out how long it would take for the main character to get everywhere. For a novel, I’d probably have to take off two years of my life to just sit and do the research. So I'm never saying never, but not right now.

What have you read recently that you could recommend?

We spoke about intergenerational trauma and being products of our families. Family Secrets by Sarah Birnhack is very oldie but goodie about that intergenerational aspect of who we are. Between the Thorns by Libby Lazewnik is also very complex with all different ways to look at things and a very good read. And of course, everyone has to read Leah Gebber’s Within My Walls. To my mind, anything that Leah Gebber, Rachael Lavon, or Etka Gitel Schwartz write, just go read it.

I'm also going to recommend a few short stories from Mishpacha, because I think that they are very often gems. I'm specifically not mentioning any of my co-writers at Family First because I wouldn’t want  to insult anyone by mistaken omission, so I've chosen other recent stories. Out of the Ashes by Perl Weisz, And Flowers Bloom Even Then by Chaya Sara Davis, Sebastien by Ester Zirkind, and Case in Point by Zisi Naimark.

What’s coming up next for you?

I have a story coming out in Calligraphy, building the story very differently than the regular format.  I had a really hectic year and didn't get to write anything in the last two Calligraphies. For this year, I had a deadline for Calligraphy that I was hoping to make, but I was really busy with something else and thought I’d have to give up on it. And then on the day of the deadline I just sat down and told myself I would start writing and see how it goes. And the story was written in one and a half days. You can have a plot and hammer it out and hammer it out, but nothing happens. And then suddenly when you think you’re missing the deadline, it goes. I call it the pulling of a thread. I sometimes tell the editors that I can’t find anything to pull…and then with Hashem’s help (because all of this is only due to Him!) it’s there. I pull…and out comes the whole thing.  I myself couldn't believe it once I read it - I actually really enjoyed the end product myself!

Early Releases, Early Reviews

Late Yom Tov means titles published earlier than ever, and we’ve heard from you: you’re reading them as you as you can. The full Sukkos roundup will hit your inbox in early October, but enjoy a peak at four fiction titles that set the tone for a fantastic season of reading.

Today, Shuli Mensh - Frum drama takes a chill-pill in this understated and easy novel about a battle-scarred family. Their father put his lifestyle ahead of his family. Now his children are turning their backs on his ambition - but it may be too late to clear their name. Whether a frozen dating life, fears of insanity, questioned dreams, or regretted pranks, the Fishers put one step ahead of another and tap into the growth that life has to offer. Light on plot, Today is heavy on rich description that absorbs you into the everyday lives of intriguing characters and takes you along for the ups and downs.

The Final Battle, M. Kenan - The long-awaited conclusion brings relief to the war-weary Jews of Khazar. Enemies plot to end years of division, but as their cunning plans near a showdown, they become dangerously intertwined. Weaving dozens of characters and storylines, The Final Battle features familiar heroes like Istrak, Mehallalel, and Yuzbad, but only the intriguing new characters can protect New Khazar on the edge. Pedahel sets out for exile seeking justice, until he learns of the gray area behind the story he’s been told. In the Sultan’s palace, Dizar wrestles with the horrific price of his family’s life. And Tarnal flounders, oblivious to his magical abilities that can untangle a web of distrust. Through slowly building suspense, complex characters confront their pasts, unearthing their true loyalties in a world where everyone is suspect and nothing is unexpected.

Fault Lines, Rachel Newton - A colorful and wide-ranging short story collection about the pasts that shape us and the colored lenses we see the world through. Layered and nuanced stories bring vibrant life and depth to unique characters and settings on the edge of society, shifting from casual banter to impossible choices and from fiery drama to teasing mystery. Behind personalities and perspectives you’ve never encountered lie the complex emotion and experiences that will feel oh-so familiar.

The Stars are Fire, Rachel Berger - A raw and humorous novel from the author of All Fall Down. Miri left her charming ex-husband for good reason, but as she tries to pick up the pieces, the world wonders. A futile custody battle, shadowy dating prospects, and her children’s loyalties slip away as she loses the reins to her life. Meanwhile, the family business is facing bankruptcy and someone with inside knowledge is leaking to their competitors - but their aging father can’t know the truth about his enterprise. The fast-paced drama combines mystery, banter, and tears for a fun and suspenseful read that doesn’t take itself seriously.