Cricket in a Fist

By (author): Naomi K. Lewis

One night, Agatha Winter’s phone rings. Jasmine, her 13-year-old sister, has run away from home and needs to be picked up at the bus terminal. It’s the anniversary of their mother’s accident and subsequent split from the family. Jasmine is determined to exact revenge. Their mother, now a flashy self-help guru under a new moniker, preaches “willing amnesia”: liberation by deliberately forgetting and disowning the past.

But “willing amnesia” is no innovation: it runs in the family. The girls’ grandmother and great-grandmother, both Holocaust survivors, have found their own superficially innocuous yet fiercely destructive ways to fend off memory. In separate struggles, the girls work to break free from the burden of their family’s silence.

Told in three major and two minor voices, Cricket in a Fist offers sophisticated psychological insight. Lewis’s rich command of language transports us into a world of richly imagined characters.

AUTHOR

Naomi K. Lewis

Naomi K. Lewis was born in England, lived in Washington DC, and grew up in Ottawa. Her stories have been published in the Fiddlehead, the New Quarterly, the Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, and Grain. “The Guiding Light,” a chapter of the novel that began as a story, won the Fiddlehead Fiction Prize in 2007. Lewis now lives in Edmonton. Cricket in a Fist is her first book-length work of fiction.

Reviews

In this psychologically sophisticated debut novel, Naomi K. Lewis burrows into the inner sanctum of a family whose collective memory is purposefully vanishing. Agatha and Jasmine Winter, children of a flashy self-help guru who preaches “willing amnesia,” seek truth in the tangled strands of past and present. On the anniversary of their mother’s accident, they are thrown together in a struggle to break free of the burden of family silence — their grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s experiences of the Holocaust, their mother’s betrayal, and their own secrets, lies, and denials. Enmeshed among the fading filaments, there is hope and possibility.

Told in three major and two minor voices, Cricket in a Fist is a work of precocious mastery, provocative to the core.


“The emotional and psychological action in the novel is so rich and intricate that the reader is carried along through the decades of story without so much as a hiccup. This is a wonderfully well-rounded story with true-to-life characters, emotions, and situations, making it an impressive first effort by an obviously talented writer.”
Quill & Qurie starred review

“Moving… genuine.”
Globe and Mail

“In her passionately felt first novel, Naomi K. Lewis explores how the Holocaust distorts the lives of surviving generations. Cricket in a Fist asks difficult questions about personal freedom and the long arm of the past.”
Cricket in a Fist lays a handful of fingers on what goes wrong when we are young. There’s a whole family of trouble beating here, and Naomi K. Lewis gives voice to it all — a smartly structured, tender, and candid first novel.”

Awards

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Excerpts & Samples ×

One night, Agatha Winter’s phone rings. Jasmine, her 13-year-old sister, has run away from home and needs to be picked up at the bus terminal. It’s the anniversary of their mother’s accident and subsequent split from the family. Jasmine is determined to exact revenge. Their mother, now a flashy self-help guru under a new moniker, preaches “willing amnesia”: liberation by deliberately forgetting and disowning the past.

But “willing amnesia” is no innovation: it runs in the family. The girls’ grandmother and great-grandmother, both Holocaust survivors, have found their own superficially innocuous yet fiercely destructive ways to fend off memory. In separate struggles, the girls work to break free from the burden of their family’s silence.

Told in three major and two minor voices, Cricket in a Fist offers sophisticated psychological insight. Lewis’s rich command of language transports us into a world of richly imagined characters.

Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

268 Pages
8.5in * 5.5in * 0.68in
335gr

Published:

February 22, 2008

Publisher:

Goose Lane Editions

ISBN:

9780864924957

9780864925589 – EPUB

Book Subjects:

FICTION / Literary

Featured In:

All Books

Language:

eng

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