From a Sealed Room

By: Rachel Kadish

Narrated by: Rebecca Gibel

In this affecting, perceptive novel, Rachel Kadish reflects on the ghosts of the past, the tensions of war, and the difficult bonds of family.

When Maya enrolls at Hebrew University in Jerusalem shortly after the Gulf War, she hopes to leave New York and a fraught relationship with her mother behind her. In Israel, she gets to know her older cousin Tami, a housewife whose home has a room sealed against the war's Scud missile attacks. Like Maya, Tami feels distanced from the people closest to her - her mother, her husband, her only son. But it will ultimately be Maya's visits with Shifra, an elderly recluse and Holocaust survivor who lives in the apartment below her, that give Maya the courage to confront her problems and break free of the burdens of her past.

©1998 Rachel Kadish (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

I almost gave up!

This book just dragged and is not one I will recommend. I think the author has an interesting style of writing but this really had me scratching my head.

Interesting weaving of stories, but confusing and.

Close to the end, the book tied stories together in an interesting way, but most of the book was sad and tedious

Good but does not compare with her other book The Weight of Ink

Although this is a good book it meanders and does not come to a satisfying, unifying conclusion. Although there are meaningful strands in the book, overall I am not sure what point she was trying to make. Read the other book. The Weght of Ink.

A plot that seems to go nowhere

After listening for more than six hours, I cannot see anywhere this story is leading.
The endless descriptions of the smallest details just do not move the narrative forward and keep wondering when is
something meaningful going to happen.
I gave up, and turned it back in.