There Is No Other

From the streets of modern Israel to the barrooms of Brooklyn to a suburban New England synagogue, the characters in these nine stories search for love and acceptance in a world scarred by loss and loneliness. In "The Madonna of Temple Beth Elohim," an Iraq war veteran sees a vision of the Virgin Mary on the eve of the Jewish high holidays. In "My Darling Sweetheart Baby," a working-class drunk waits on his stoop for his disability check and the courage to proclaim his love to a local prostitute. And in the title story "There Is No Other," a rage-filled Jewish boy, tormented by his African lineage, arrives at a school Purim party dressed as the prophet Mohammed. Magical, erotic, spiritually penetrating and terrifyingly realistic, these provocative tales continue the storytelling tradition of Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, and Nathan Englander.

• "It would be enough to say that Jonathan Papernick is an utterly original writer--one who doesn't rely on gimmicks, but rather on amazingly real characters and consistently page-turning plots. But There Is No Other  is even better than that: every single story here delivers a knockout punch that will leave you reeling--and revising your thinking on what life and love really mean."     

--Dara Horn, author of In the Image, The World to Come and All Other Nights