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Bridging the distance

by
September 2006, no. 284

Border Street by Suzanne Leal

Scribe, $32.95 pb, 336 pp

Bridging the distance

by
September 2006, no. 284

Halfway through Border Street, an ageing Holocaust survivor describes a night spent standing in the snow at Dachau. His companion, a young Australian woman desperate to understand what he has been through, tries to simulate his ordeal: she wades waist-deep into the winter surf and is shocked by the terrible cold. It is a futile, melodramatic gesture, but a touching one as well; here and throughout this quietly affecting first novel, Suzanne Leal explores the limits of human sympathy with compassion, understatement and tender humour.

Border Street

Border Street

by Suzanne Leal

Scribe, $32.95 pb, 336 pp

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