Breakfast with the Ones You Love [Kindle Edition]

I ran across this book accidentally. I had never heard of the book nor the author. However, the premise immediately caught my attention: A loner who can kill with her mind who finds herself falling in love with someone who professes to be one of the Chosen, and who is building something strange and wonderful in an abandoned section of the local Sears and Roebuck.

Often, books with these types of premises can be horrible; it takes a deft touch to keep things internally consistent and to keep from wandering off into slapstick. Fortunately Mr. Fintushel has that deft touch. Despite the extraordinary premise the characters ring true.

The book is also filled with vivid imagery. Opening to a random page I found this:

"Everything down there was made of dust. The light was made of dust. The dust walls were no-color, like black-and-white movie walls, and where light came in the air shined, because the air was dust."

Compare this to something I might have written:

"It was very dusty."

I trust you see the difference.

After I finished this I immediately tracked down and read as many of Mr. Fintushel's short stories as I could (this is his first novel), and two questions came to mind:

1. Why had I not heard of this gentleman before?

2. Where could I find more?

This is an amazing book, and I don't even like science fiction! I was hooked from the first paragraph, and by the time I was half way through, I realized it wasn't just the crazy but very seductive plot; it was Lea, who was slowly transforming from someone dangerously bazarre into a complex and very sympathetic human being. And by the end it was apparent that this book, along with being really fun to read, is also a sensitive and touching portrayal of the human caapcity to emerge from a life-deadening fear into a yes-saying affirmation of lfe, like how we feel when we have breakfast with the ones we love. One other comment: I think Eliot Funtushel's perceptive psychological insights, together with his wild imagination and very talented gift with words and language, make for a read chocked full of delightful surprises.

Lea Tillim is either a) a runaway with a bad attitude who has gotten messed up with a young drug dealer, and who may have killed at least one man; or b) a pretty young girl with a special ability who is helping a young Jewish man rescue the Chosen. She is definitely the heroine of Eliot Fintushel's first novel, Breakfast With the Ones You Love. Fintushel has written a number of striking stories over the past decade or so, often funny (even to the point of wackiness), often on Jewish themes, often about lonely people looking for some sort of family. And all that describes this novel fairly well -- though it's never really "wacky" in its humor.

Lea has run away from home after a family tragedy the nature of which is slowly revealed. She is determined to show no feelings to anyone -- partly because of her past, and perhaps also because her looks get her unwanted attention from men. (And even women like her fellow waitress.) She is working at a restaurant whose owner may have mob connections. And she finds herself attracted to a young man she calls "the Yid," who she saves from a beating one day by using her special mental power to kill his attacker.

The Yid -- real name Jack Konar -- believes that he is the Chosen of the Chosen, and that it is his duty to build a spaceship to bring the Chosen people to another planet upon the coming of the Meschiach. Lea, who he calls "shiksie," is helping his project, even though, as a "shiksie" she is not eligible to join him. This is taking place in an abandoned section of a Sears and Roebuck. Lea also talks to her cat, who isn't too happy with her misuse of her powers. And she keeps avoiding the good attentions of her landlady, whose daughter died years before, and who clearly is looking for a sort of replacement.

All this is goofy enough. And for sure there is an "out" available -- Lea and Jack are both pretty damaged people, and maybe she is just a messed up runaway and he's a deluded drug dealer. At this level the story still attracts -- Lea's personal story is affecting. We worry about her: Jack is not always a good influence (the killings seem at first to be taken rather too lightly, for one thing); she has a distressing past; she needs to decide to reconnect with the world. And, eventually, with her long lost brother. But we can't, in the end, ignore the fantastic parts, which spiral from a plot to use her power to fix a boxing match, to a realization that her landlady may be a tool of Satan, to an eventual duel with that being himself, as the End of the World approaches.

I enjoyed this novel, but I don't think it ranks with Fintushel at his best. (My personal favorites are the sadly neglected "Milo and Sylvie" and "Auschwitz and the Rectification of History.") The main problem is that the fantastical conceit -- Jack's part of the story, about the Chosen and the Meschiach and the spaceship -- simply doesn't convince, and despite some clever and bravura description, it didn't interest me. By contrast, Lea's story is quite affecting, and her personal growth, by the end, seems real and earned. This will be one of the best first novels of the year in the field -- and don't forget to try not just this novel but Fintushel's shorter works.