Away: Irene Bortnick

Posted At : July 23, 2008 1:00 AM
Related Categories: Fiction

Excerpted from Away by Amy Bloom, published by Random House and used by permission.

Read by Irene Bortnick: "Lillian fled the pogroms in Russia, as did my grandparents. However, while Lillian made her way to New York, my grandparents sought a better life in South Africa." As a young child growing up in South Africa, Irene would be so lost in a book that she would not hear her name being called. She teaches kindergarten and loves reading to and with children. Irene checks the municipal library website often.

In Amy Bloom's novel Away, Lillian forges on despite repeated hardship and failure:

"It's not that prayer seems like a bad idea out here. It seems like a good and optimistic idea, but Lillian does not believe in anything like God. ... Lillian believes in luck and hunger (and greed, which is really just the rich man's hunger...). She believes in fear as a motivator and she believes in curiosity (hers should have shrunk to nothing by now but feeds on something Lillian cannot make sense of) and she believes in will. It is so frail and delicate at night that she can't even imagine the next morning, but it is so wide and binding by the middle of the next day that she cannot even remember the terrible night. It is as if she gives birth every day."

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I was interested to see that Irene Bortnick had written a comment about the book 'Away' . I was at school with Irene in South Africa.
I last saw her in London in about 1980 and have tbeen
trying to find her. My maiden name was Rosemary Bishop.
If any body can help I would love her to contact me. I am
also a teacher and I work with primary school teachers
in Cape Town South Africa.

# Posted By Rosemary Thomas | 7/30/08 6:01 AM

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