In brief: The Teacher; Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders; Liar – reviews
The Teacher
Michal Ben-Naftali (trans Daniella Zamir)
Open Letter, £12.99, pp138
This spare, enigmatic novella seizes from the start. It’s a fictional biography of one Elsa Weiss, an aloof but admired English teacher at a Tel Aviv high school who jumped to her death from the roof of her apartment building. Thirty years later, the narrator – an unnamed former student, now a teacher herself – decides to investigate. The Holocaust holds the key to the riddle of Elsa’s death (she escaped Budapest on the real-life Kastner train and struggled with survivor’s guilt), but so much about her life remains unknown that the narrator has to fall back on her own imagination, creating a book within a book. While plenty remains unexplained – including, on occasion, Michal Ben-Naftali’s authorial intent – it’s a vivid, meticulously crafted look at trauma’s legacy.
Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders: The Pioneering Adventures of the First Professional Women
Jane Robinson
Doubleday, £20, pp368
Jane Robinson’s Bluestockings told the story of the fight for female education in Britain. Her latest, arrestingly written and deeply researched, describes what came next for those trailblazing graduates. It opens with the 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, which was supposed to throw open the professions to women. Instead, they found themselves faced with yet more obstacles, from the misogynistic to the farcical (the book’s title, for instance, derives from one of the main arguments that male architects came up with to keep women from practising). A stirring testament to unsung heroines, it also asks some uncomfortable questions of our own times.
Liar
Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (trans Sondra Silverston)
Pushkin Press, £8.99, pp283
Nofar’s name means “water lily” but, at 17, she’s yet to blossom. As a disappointing summer spent working in an ice-cream parlour draws to a close, an altercation with a customer – a tetchy talent show winner whose 15 minutes of TV fame are long gone – gets out of hand. The police are called, and in the commotion, they suspect Nofar to be the victim of a sexual assault. Basking in the attention, she does nothing to correct them, but will she really let an innocent man go to prison? Gundar-Goshen is not only an award-winning novelist, she’s also a psychologist, and her lightly worn clinical expertise sharpens a witty, nuanced exploration of the treacherous grey area into which Nofar strays.
• To order Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders: The Pioneering Adventures of the First Professional Women or Liar go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15
