When I invite my customers to order their last drinks, several raise their fingers, sure I’ll remember what they previously ordered. One more beer, one more vodka. Another Gin & Tonic. In the darkened room, several night owls linger at their tables, heads low, engaged in whispered conversation. One man sits alone on a stool at the far end of the bar. He’s wearing a red plaid shirt and sports a thin gray goatee and wise eyes. My age, maybe a few years younger. He's been sitting there for about thirty minutes or so. He calls me over.
Ellis Shuman Writes
News, reviews, Israel, Bulgaria, and everything in between
Saturday, February 15, 2025
"Last Rounds" Published in POSTBOX
When I invite my customers to order their last drinks, several raise their fingers, sure I’ll remember what they previously ordered. One more beer, one more vodka. Another Gin & Tonic. In the darkened room, several night owls linger at their tables, heads low, engaged in whispered conversation. One man sits alone on a stool at the far end of the bar. He’s wearing a red plaid shirt and sports a thin gray goatee and wise eyes. My age, maybe a few years younger. He's been sitting there for about thirty minutes or so. He calls me over.
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Rakiya review - Kat Loves Books
Mother and Daughter… A Roma lives with her daughter above a bakery. They live off anything they are given, or can steal. The mother believes she is doing everything for her daughter. This was just sad. 2 stars
Sozopol… A writers conference turns deadly. Really good twist. 4 stars
Three Women in Sofia… An American decides to attend classes in Bulgaria, and meets three women who taught him more than he could have expected. Really quite good. 4 stars
Lockdown… Two young girls are charged with a crime when entering Bulgaria during lockdown. This was a really good story. 5 stars
Thursday, January 23, 2025
"Ten Minutes" - short story
When the sirens sounded at three in the morning, the five members of the Lutsky family jumped from their beds. This wasn’t the first time that the Houthis in Yemen had fired a missile at Israel, and it wasn’t the first time that their small moshav near Ramla was one of the areas alerted to the incoming attack, so the Lutskys were familiar with the drill. They ran downstairs to their safe room−a reinforced room on the ground floor that served as Natan’s office on the days he worked from home, and which would now provide protection for their family.
As she passed through the kitchen, five-year-old Miri glanced out the window. The sidewalk was lit by a streetlight; the Frenkels’ house next door was completely dark.
“Abba, there’s a man outside!” Miri said, stopping in her tracks.
“Hurry, Miri,” her mother Anat called from the doorway of the safe room. “We only have a minute to get in.”
The siren was still wailing, but Miri didn’t move. “That man doesn’t have a place to go! The rocket could hit him!”
“Which man?” Natan asked, joining his daughter in the kitchen. “I’m sure he’s okay,” he said, urging his youngest daughter to follow him to safety.
“He needs to come in!” Miri said. She brushed aside Matka, the family mutt, and said, “I’m opening the door.”
Read the rest of the story on Esoterica.
Friday, January 17, 2025
"Terms of Abandonment" - short story
The first time she saw him, her biological father refused
to speak with her. She had been waiting at the corner coffee shop, as agreed,
but when he showed up, he didn’t even cross the street and approach her table.
She remained there for half an hour after he walked off, her cappuccino cold
and forgotten.
What kind of father was he to have had no concern for her
all these years? Admittedly, she had rarely given him a second thought until
she packed up her mother’s belongings in the weeks following her death and
discovered the box of her memories. A high school yearbook, report cards from
grade school, a trophy from a running competition. Dried flowers inside a small
book of poetry. Nothing worth saving. She would remember her mother for other
things. And then, at the very bottom of the box, several envelopes, the address
written in fading blue ink.
With shaking hands, she opened the first letter. It
started out with ‘Dearest Marjorie’ and every other sentence contained words of
endearment. ‘Love of my life’. ‘My Marjorie’. ‘Oh, my darling.’ Sweet nothings,
Kitsch phrases for sure, yet they were words expressing passion, a connection
that must have been just as strong for her mother.
His name was Emmanuel, but he signed his letters Manny.
Even though everyone called her mother by her nickname, Marge, he addressed her
as Marjorie, as if he was afraid of letting go of a single letter in her name.
Yet he had let her go. Shortly after her mother gave
birth, Emanuel disappeared from her mother’s life and never had he appeared in
hers. Whenever she asked her mother to tell her about her father, begging
almost, the discussion had been taboo. She learned nothing at all and the
subject was dropped.
Read the full story in In Parentheses Literary Magazine (Volume 9, Issue 2) Winter 2025. Available for purchase on MagCloud.
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Review of "The Anatomy of Exile" by Zeeva Bukai
In
the novel The Anatomy of Exile by Zeeva Bukai (Delphinium Books,
January 14, 2025), we learn that Hadas had lived with Tamar and Salim in a
mostly dilapidated Arab village on the outskirts of northern Tel Aviv. The Arab
who killed Hadas, Daoud, was from that village. Only Tamar knows the full story
of Hadas’s relationship with Daoud; she will keep this secret from Salim for
years.
On
the morning after the thirty-day period of mourning for his sister, Salim,
whose very name is evidence of his dual identity as both Arab and Jew,
announces to Tamar and their three children, "We're going to America, to
New York City… Five years, that's all I need," he tells them. "I'm
going to make so much money that when we return, we'll have enough to buy a car
and a villa on the beach in Herzliya."
But
the family’s stay in New York is becoming more permanent by the year. Their
exile is painful for Tamar. “The hours you put in. For what?” she asks her
husband. “Let’s go home.”
As
she grows up, Tamar’s daughter Ruby forms a relationship with a Palestinian
youth who has moved into the apartment upstairs. Remembering the tragic story
of Hadas’s relationship with Daoud, Tamar is worried that history will repeat
itself with her daughter. She is determined to keep Ruby and Faisal apart.
It’s
hard to believe that Anatomy of an Exile is a debut novel, for the
storytelling is rich with details and the author skillfully brings the
characters to life with sentimentally charged dialogues. Every word that
comes out of Ruby’s mouth is that of a typical teenager. Tamar’s longing and
doubt are deeply felt by the reader. Even Salim’s reluctance to give up on his
American dream is understandable, if not acceptable.
Readers
will be captivated by this intimate journey of an Israeli family into their
self-imposed exile, and by the struggles of Tamar to keep her daughter safe,
her marriage intact, and to find the way to bring her family back to the
country she knows as home.
Zeeva
Bukai was born in Israel and raised in New York City. Her stories have been
published in Carve Magazine, Pithead Chapel, the Lilith anthology Frankly
Feminist: Stories by Jewish Women, December Magazine, Image Journal,
Jewishfiction.net, Women's Quarterly Journal, and the Jewish Quarterly. She is
the Assistant Director of Academic Support at SUNY Empire State University and
lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Tuesday, January 7, 2025
A Story in Which Two Yeshiva Students Come to a Shtetl
I take a deep breath
and hold the pages at a distance. The story, recently sent back to me by the
freelance Yiddish translator I found online, holds my attention. So simple and
Chelm-like, it transports me backwards in time, to another world and another mindset.
I pick up the original
handwritten pages from the table. Pages I had discovered in the attic in a box
labeled ‘Father’s writings.’ The pages had not been written by my father, but
rather by my paternal grandfather. I was emptying the attic because I was selling
my parent’s house. Three months had passed since my father’s death, and it was
time to put the past behind me. Proceeds from the house’s sale would be shared
with my two sisters.
Read the rest of the story on OfTheBook.
Saturday, December 28, 2024
Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb
I’ve
been writing ever since I was a boy. Creative writing was my favorite subject
in school, and the feedback from my teachers encouraged me. I wanted to follow
in my father’s footsteps—he was a journalist at the local newspaper—but I was
always drawn to writing fiction.
My
first book was a collection of short stories set in Israel, where I had moved
with my family at the age of 15. The stories were based on my experiences
living on a kibbutz, a collective farming community in Israel’s southern
desert. Life on the kibbutz was evolving, from socialist idealism to modern
capitalism, and I strived to show these changes in my fiction.
I
wrote two suspense novels set in Bulgaria, but I’ve gravitated to the craft of
writing short stories. I enjoy the format of introducing characters and plots
in a limited number of words. In many ways, this is more challenging than
writing a novel.
Tuesday, December 17, 2024
My Interview on Talk Radio Europe
I talked with Hannah Murray on Talk Radio Europe's 'The Book Show' in November.
"Joining us on the line now is Ellis Shuman. He's an American-born Israeli author, travel writer, and book reviewer..."
You can hear the full interview here.