The Pale of Settlement: Stories - Softcover

Much like Primo Levi's, Singer's prose is sparse, searing, and hauntingly descriptive.

What results is a lyrical, thoughtful, never trite reflection on Israel and Palestine that has won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. The book is written with a large audience in mind, and there is enough historical background and explanation for anyone to follow along. . . . Singer must be credited with fiercely considering a controversial topic and remaining true to language.

Singer's seasoned and deeply moving interlinked stories about politics, memory and identity read more like the work of a veteran novelist and add up to one of the most astonishing literary debuts in recent memory. . . . With heartbreaking beauty, grace and wisdom, The Pale of Settlement offers us stories of the sort of penetrating novelistic depth rarely achieved in short fiction, recounting the forceful ways that the past, whether remote or near, urgently intrudes on the present.

[Singer] deftly sets larger political themes next to smaller personal ones, as the daily choices her characters make reflect the larger forces that have set those characters and their ancestor into motion. . . . The linked short stories that make up The Pale of Settlement work far better than a more conventional narrative would in telling the tale of Susan's family.

Singer writes clearly, succinctly, and effectively. The characters are believable, and the stories uplifting but realistic. Modern issues―terrorism and the second Lebanon war―intrude, but do not overwhelm, a testament to Singer's skill and artistry.

The triumph of Singer's The Pale of Settlement is that we enjoy the questions as much as any answers that might appear.

Should reassure us that the short story remains a deliciously shape-shifting genre . . . The stories in The Pale of Settlement make a strong impression, offering a debut collection that is mature, confident, and haunting.

Margot Singer gives brave and eloquent voice to a new generation of Jewish wanderers in a global diaspora. In her stories, Israel is the first, enduring love, the place of origin and ending―but for many of her Israeli characters, a difficult and increasingly destructive love. The question of ‘home’ remains finally, dazzlingly, undecidable. Singer guides us, as one who knows, into the complex labyrinth of history where lives arise, and too often are unraveled. She is a marvel of a writer.