Holding My Breath: A Novel
by Sidura Ludwig
THE JEWISH INDEPENDENT
15 December 2006, review by Cynthia Ramsay
Click Here to see the original review in context.
More than one kind of love
First-time novelist Ludwig nails the genre, while Kushner struggles.
There isn't much connecting the two works of fiction reviewed in this week's Independent, other than their Jewish theme and their focus on love.
Family, self or both?
Holding My Breath by Sidura Ludwig, which will be released by Key Porter Books in March 2007, is worth the wait. In her first novel, Ludwig tells with grace and wisdom the story of a Jewish family – the Levys – living in Winnipeg's North End during the late 1940s and into the '70s. She does so from the perspective of Beth, the youngest in a household of two generations of strong women, and mainly focuses on Beth's relationships with her mother, her two aunts and her uncle, who died before Beth was born.
Beth's mother, Goldie, aspires to (and achieves) the middle-class life. She is the linchpin of her family and the local Jewish community, albeit with the quiet support of her husband and, as she gets older, Beth. Aunt Carrie never marries and carries not only a secret, tragic past, but is the one who ingrains in Beth the memory and dreams of Uncle Phil. Aunt Sarah, the most beautiful and rebellious of the three sisters, is the one Beth most idolizes, but whose star loses its shine as Sarah loses herself.
Beth does not wish to dedicate herself to the family pharmacy business or the Jewish community. She doesn't want to live in the past or fail in her dreams, as she has seen her aunts do. To be happy, she must reach a compromise between her own wishes and her duties to her family. Ironically, or fittingly, it is her uncle who most helps set her on the path to her future.
In Holding My Breath, Ludwig captures the complexities of love, as it relates to personal happiness but also responsibility to family, friends and community. She has a talent for dialogue and manages to communicate the feeling garnered by those uncomfortable moments we've all experienced when something awkward is said and people flounder to find a response.
While this is Ludwig's first novel, she has had short fiction published in several magazines and anthologies and she is the recipient of the Canadian Author and Bookman First Prize for Most Promising New Writer. Much-deserved honors, indeed.