Daughters of Sarah: Anthology of Jewish Women Writing in French ed. by Eva Martin Sartori and Madeleine Cottenet-Hage (review)

168Women in French Studies autobiographical Et elles eurent beaucoup d'enfants. . . : Histoire d'unefamille homoparentale. It touches upon crucial issues for lesbian parents: visibility, the father, the co-mother, language, new reproductive technologies, desire for integration versus assertion of difference, and the "threat" to the social order. Chapter eight discusses maternal guilt and its primacy in the management of maternal ambivalence in Marie Darrieussecq's Le Mal de mer and Christine Angot's Léonore, toujours. In her conclusion, Rye reiterates her main idea that loss plays a significant role in mothering and adds that maternal ambivalence is normal, yet must be managed. Rye's study is a valuable contribution to feminist scholarship and twentiethand twenty-first-century French literary and cultural studies. Easily read in its entirety due to its thematic coherence, the book also lends itselfto choosing only those chapters on specific texts or subjects of interest to the individual. It is accessible to undergraduates, yet theoretical and dense enough for graduate students and professors. I highly recommend it not only to students, teachers, and researchers, but to mothers from every walk of life who seek new and broader definitions of "normal." Julie MontyUniversity of Central Arkansas Sartori, Eva Martin, and Madeleine Cottenet-Hage, ed. Daughters ofSarah: Anthology of Jewish Women Writing in French. Teaneck, NJ: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 2006. Pp [i]-xxxii; 271. ISBN 0-8419-1436-2. $45.00 (Cloth); ISBN 0-8419-1445-1. $22.00 (Paper). As I sit down to write this review of The Daughters ofSarah, it is just a few days before Passover, a holiday during which we give extra consideration to both what it means to be Jewish and, through the repetition of the ritual questions during the Seder, how best to pass on to future generations a sense of belonging to this scattered community. In this light, The Daughters ofSarah was both a timely and a welcome read. Sartori and Cottenet-Hage have brought together translations of short works and excerpts that demonstrate quite clearly the range of experiences of "Jewishness" among women writing in French from the early nineteenth through the late twentieth centuries. They have included works by 21 different authors, some well known, others ail-but-forgotten, and some young authors, as well, who have yet to make their mark. The chronological ordering of the pieces, as well as the juxtaposition of works by familiar authors, such as Hélène Cixous and Régine Robin, with those by lesserknown writers, allows readers to hear echoes of unspoken conversations among these 'daughters of Sarah.' One of my favourite selections is drawn from Paula Jacques's Light ofMy Eye, translated by Susan D. Cohen; the writer's sensuous description ofher grandmother's time-worn body provides a powerful image for the pull ofintergenerational bonds. Book Reviews169 The pieces vary considerably in theme, tenor and, quite frankly, quality; while this in itselfis not surprising, the editors are to be commended for the geographic and stylistic breadth of the works they have assembled. While most of the pieces are drawn from works of fiction, the book includes examples from other genres: poetry, letters, diary entries, essays, and even a play. The stories are set in Paris, Jerusalem, Montréal, Bordeaux, and Constantinople. They take us from the isolation of a cold, dark train station to the heady swirl ofa belle époque salon; they have us listening in secret with a young girl to the trials ofVichy collaborators, and eavesdropping on a soldier's desperate efforts both to calm a group of children who have escaped from the ghetto and to prepare them for the death he will soon share with them. They represent the mtermingling of Ashkenazi and Sephardic traditions, as well as the tensions between generations of immigrants. Celebrations of Jewish tradition are juxtaposed with the stories of those who suffer under its weight; some of the most memorable pieces, including Sarah Levy's Beloved, reveal the insidious self-hatred produced by anti-Semitism. The editors have even included a pair of works by a mother and daughter (Fraternité, by Irène Namirovsky, an author now familiar due to the recent success of her posthumous Suitefrançaise, and Shadows...

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