The Days of Awe

June 27, 2005
The national tragedy of 9/11 collides with the personal tragedy of a Manhattan book illustrator. Artie Rubin, 67, lives on the Upper West Side with his wife, Johanna; the first half of the book deals with the ordinary details of love, work and sex in later life. At the attack on the World Trade Center midbook, Nissenson broadens the scope to include friends, acquaintances and characters who get caught in the attacks, including a man who jumps from one of the towers while talking to his fiancée, as a former romantic rival, who missed work that day, survives. Johanna suffers a serious heart attack; Artie struggles to maintain his perspective. Their lives in the Jewish community play a significant role and their faith comes in for heavy questioning. The grim conclusion adds a dark cast to an otherwise balanced narrative. This is Nissenson's first novel since the NBA and PEN-Faulkner finalist The Tree of Life
(1985). Solid character writing and attention to the details of daily life make the September 11 material well motivated; as characters continue to worry, kibitz, philosophize and complain, one feels that they have a real sense of the stakes.

August 1, 2005
Nissenson has acknowledged that fear of death inspired him to create, and this novel--whose protagonist bears more than a passing resemblance to the author--centers on mortality. In the late summer of 2001 in New York, 67-year-old Artie Rubin--certain he'll die at 73, as his father did--is facing the Days of Awe, the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when religious Jews believe God decides who will die in the coming year. Artie, an author of books of mythology, now writing about the Norse god Odin, seems surrounded by death: his former editor recently died of colon cancer, his lawyer has melanoma, his wife Johanna's blood pressure and cholesterol are dangerously high, and then comes 9/11. Even the Norse gods die, the only mythological gods to do so. Fearful of losing Johanna, Artie turns to practicing his religion in a final irony. Nissenson handles various plot threads--Artie's story and book, his family and friends, including 9/11 survivors--with skill, in short, sometimes diarylike entries. This is a moving, thought-provoking exploration of coming to grips with mortality.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)