The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers
Starred Review.Bernstein writes, "There are few rules or unwritten laws that are not  broken when circumstances demand, and few distances that are too great to be  traveled," about the figurative divide ("geographically... only a few yards,  socially... miles and miles") keeping Jews and Christians apart in the poor  Lancashire mill town in England where he was raised. In his affecting debut  memoir, the nonagenarian gives voice to a childhood version of himself who  witnesses his older sister's love for a Christian boy break down the invisible  wall that kept Jewish families from Christians across the street. With little  self-conscious authorial intervention, young Harry serves as a wide-eyed guide  to a world since dismantled—where "snot rags" are handkerchiefs, children  enter the workforce at 12 and religion bifurcates everything, including  industry. True to a child's experience, it is the details of domestic life that  illuminate the tale—the tenderness of a mother's sacrifice, the nearly  Dickensian angst of a drunken father, the violence of schoolyard anti-Semitism,  the "strange odors" of "forbidden foods" in neighbor's homes. Yet when major  world events touch the poverty-stricken block (the Russian revolution claims  the rabbi's son, neighbors leave for WWI), the individual coming-of-age is  intensified without being trivialized, and the conversational account takes on  the heft of a historical novel with stirring success.(Apr.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.