The Jungle Around Us

October 1, 2016
Raeff's stories depict people fleeing troubled lives in search of new beginnings. A painter writes her former lover from a Mexican town where she frequents a bar for prostitutes and drag queens. A California teenager reluctantly travels to Nicaragua, finding beauty in the photos he takes of his host family. A Viennese doctor escapes Europe with his morose wife and daughter, Sonya, for Bolivia, where he befriends an opium-addicted priest; and in another story, Sonya, now middle aged and living in New York, tries to find fulfillment in her gay friend's passionate love life. Anchoring the book are multiple stories about the Buchovskys: single father Isaac leaves his daughters, Juliet and Simone, with a longtime friend when he travels to the Soviet Union to do research and becomes involved in a risky relationship. Adult Simone visits Juliet in Paraguay, where she lives with a wealthy older man and his sensitive son. Stirring in its subdued depiction of sexual longing and the desire to start over, Raeff's (Clara Mondschein's Melancholia, 2002) collection finds hope amid life's tangled vines.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)