See also:

Another Chance at Life: A Breast Cancer Survivor's Journey (autobiographical)

Apart from You

by

Leonore H. Dvorkin

Create Space, 2010, ISBN 978-1449976279
(Click on the above image for a larger picture of the cover.)

"A brilliant first novel, thoroughly evolved and gorgeously executed."             - Alan Rodgers, author of Fire and Night "Gripping and powerful."             - Community News, Denver (Click here for full review.)

The novel is set in 1967 and 1968, first in Mobile, Alabama and then at Indiana University in Bloomington. (I went to school there from 1964-68; my author husband, David Dvorkin, was there from 1961-67.) However, the story is only slightly autobiographical, and it's in no way a 1960s political novel; Vietnam barely gets mentioned. The themes are deception, alienation, separation, and miscommunication between spouses, parents and children, sisters, lovers, and friends. Infidelity and sibling rivalry occupy emotional center stage. The two main characters are Elizabeth Nye, a 20-year-old German major, and Brian Petersen, the 27-year-old history teaching assistant with whom she has a five-week affair while she's temporarily separated from her liberal-minded fiancé, Alan Abrams. Elizabeth is dishonest and selfish while Brian is naive and idealistic, but virtually no one in this story is either all good or all bad. That's what makes them people rather than stereotypes. The absent Alan appears just often enough in the story to make it clear that Elizabeth will never forsake this flawed soulmate of hers for the sensitive but priggish Brian. There's no happy ending for Brian, as Elizabeth eventually tells him the truth and goes back to Alan, but the final pages make it clear that Brian is left with a small measure of optimism for the future. The final message - literally delivered in the last line - is one of hope. Minor and cameo characters include Elizabeth's self-indulgent academic father, her sexy younger sister, a not-so-merry widowed neighbor, Brian's excessively beloved older sister, his pined-after lost love, that woman's life-hardened lesbian roommate, a gay friend of Elizabeth's who's an intelligent wastrel, a smarmy German professor, and a gem and mineral dealer with an unhappy wife/assistant. The narrative technique involves the use of several different points of view. A given scene may allow the reader to see the same action from starkly contrasting points of view. This reinforces the overarching theme of the book, which is the unending difficulty of human communication. It is possible to sympathize with and condemn each of the book's dozen or so characters. Whether they elicit admiration or scorn from a given reader depends on the reader's own life experiences. There is no omniscient narrator, and no final judgment of the characters' actions and thoughts. At no point is the reader told what to think. Two Chapters Online To read two chapters of the book, click here. For a pdf version of the selection, click here. Fiction vs. Non-Fiction To read a summary of what's fiction and what's non-fiction in the novel, click here. Ordering the Book Amazon Contact I welcome comments from readers. You may contact me at leonore@csd.net or at leonore@dvorkin.com. The first is my current personal e-mail address and the latter is my permanent e-mail address. Thanks for reading all of this. I appreciate your interest.

See also:

Another Chance at Life: A Breast Cancer Survivor's Journey (autobiographical) Business Secrets from the Stars (by David Dvorkin, humor/satire) Dawn Crescent (by David and Daniel Dvorkin, Gulf War One goes wrong) Pit Planet (by David Dvorkin, science fiction)