Choose Somebody Else: A Collection of Short Stories

Praise for Choose Somebody Else

Yvonne Fein’s stories are uncompromising in their expression of human emotions ranging from cold bigotry to empathy, despair to elation, and from rage to love. Fein knows how to tell a story with imagination, compelling dialogue and sustained tension. Informed by a deep knowledge of Jewish lore, and enhanced by years of refining her craft, her tales are driven by a deep yearning to step with compassion and understanding, beyond the shadows of a time when humanity sank to the lowest levels of depravity.

— Arnold Zable, author

‘[Fein’s] book is utterly delightful, inspirational and deeply thought-provoking. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It was a privilege to immerse myself in your delicately crafted words. In all the books I have to read as a reviewer, being able to immerse myself in yours was an absolute joy.’

— Alan Gold, author and reviewer

‘Yvonne Fein’s collection of short stories is plump with Jewish humour, a touch of magic realism and a bisl (little) pathos. She interweaves modern life, colourful characters and Jewish history into a vividly evocative tapestry.’

— Jeanette Leigh, author and journalist

‘A blend of light and dark, of wry humour and fierce reminders.’

— Clare Allan, Writers Victoria

‘Fein is a masterly evocative storyteller. With poignant observation, and surgically economic language she imbues her stories in universal and at times mythical narratives. She traverses easily between references to biblical metaphors, cultural literary history, Hassidic folk tales and post WW2 western popular culture. Underpinning the geography, often of her familiar Jewish Melbourne and the socio/political context of her tales are the psychological and emotional scars perpetrated upon the survivors and the second-generation Holocaust survivors. Although the past haunts the present, the future remains surprisingly uncertain in these beautifully crafted stories. This collection of short stories is an important contribution to the canon of contemporary (Jewish) literature.’

— Dr Victor Majzner, artist

‘These fiercely intense stories carry a serious punch. Although they vary in subject matter – from the travails of a glutton, to the rites of passage of an Australian Jewish Princess, to fantastical stories of Jewish mysticism – they share a terrific energy, a narrative drive, and ultimately a unifying thread. That thread renders the formation of the life of the second-generation survivor, that ‘lucky’ person, born to survivors of the Shoah, who was born to the torments of knowing and half-knowing what it has meant to be a Jew in the Twentieth Century. Most acutely and succinctly, in her closing story, Fein writes of the Israeli kibbutznik whom terrorists murder at the Munich Olympics: ‘Yossi had come home not to a parade but in a box’. I read these twelve words, knew the world can never manage to love us for long, yet I was ambushed by pain and I wept. Fein’s title beckons towards that heavy knowing. ‘If the Jews are the chosen people,’ she cries to God, ‘choose somebody else!’

— Howard Goldenberg, author and doctor

‘There is no doubting Yvonne Fein is a talented wordsmith. Choose Somebody Else is a splendidly crafted selection of short stories laced with drama, love, resentment, friendships and humour. Although fictional and diverse, there is universality to each tale as Fein’s writing caresses the reader along a journey bridging seemingly lived experiences of Jewish culture and inheritance. However, no matter from where she coins her conceptions, indeed whether you are a second-generation Holocaust survivor (as am I) or not, Yvonne Fein’s message concerning legacy is potent: we each have an obligation to not forget what went before. ‘

— Cheryl Koenig OAM. author

Y.L. Fein’s “Boat People” is another story that focuses on one character’s epiphanic moment, but one tinged with a bit more bluntness. Claire Gold finds herself in some academic hot water for interrupting a high-status lecture at her university. Claire takes issue with a renowned professor’s sympathetic opinion of Stalinist Russia and finds herself having to write a letter to the Dean defending herself on why she should still keep her scholarship. From this setup, Claire tries to write about her family and the story interweaves Claire’s present-day life with that of her grandparents’ lives as told to her by her mother. Claire’s inner-conflict of coming to terms with her family’s past trauma and her own identity as a Jewish woman is gripping. Y.L. Fein fills the story with believable dialogue, authentic characterizations, and an emotional frankness that makes the work a rewarding read.

— Aran Singh, The Tishman Review 

‘Yvonne Fein brings a luminous new imagination to the traumas and triumphs of the Jewish experience. The achievement of her stories is to compel the reader to re-engage with a narrative of nightmare and courage in danger of disappearing into archives.’

— Robert Hillman, award-winning author

An enthralling, entertaining and compelling collection of short stories tackling life’s questions, big and banal, with an evocative, humorous and thought-provoking authority. The stories are discrete but connected by their representations of various generations of the tormented.