Edeet Ravel - Your sad eyes and unforgettable mouth

Praise for Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth

A splendid novel, gorgeously written. Edeet Ravel brings deep insight and humour to this exquisitely moving story of a group of friends haunted by memories of unfathomable losses and burdened by secrets of love and death.Donna Morrissey, author of Sylvanus Now and What They Wanted

A very fine and moving novel Nuanced, compassionate, insightful and gently humorous Ravel does an excellent job of bringing all these characters to life, making us care for them, even ache for them. This is a sign of her great skill, as is the complexity and depth of her characters. There are no stereotypes here What shines through this wonderful novel is the incredibly impressive, one might even say heroic impetus toward life on the part of both the survivors and their children All the characters are deeply burdened but beautiful. Wounded, but wonderful A heartbreaking but funny, readable bookwhat remains with you as much as the horror and grief is the almost infinite human capacity for recovery, resilience, hope and beauty. A true testament not only to the survivors of the Holocaust and their children, but to Edeet Ravels talent. The Globe and Mail

A lyrical, passionate and subtle account of the emotional challenges faced by children of Holocaust survivors, whose parents are wobbly and partly dysfunctional but still courageous and full of love. Lawrence Hill, author of The Book of Negroes

Sweetly compelling. More (Toronto)

Edeet Ravels latest book, Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth, is, on one level, pure entertainmenta traditional novel with all that we expect from the form: passion, drama and life-changing secrets that span decades. At the same time, it is a thought-provoking commentary on the legacy of the Holocaust. National Post

Ravel nails the historical underpinnings and offers a truly sensitive read. Chatelaine

Praise for the Tel Aviv Trilogy

A Wall of Light by Edeet Ravel charmed me utterly. I was captivated.Elizabeth Hay, Giller juror

Skillfully juggling the weight of the multi-layered past with the bright intensity of the present, Ravel has written a book that shimmers with suspense, mystery and wit. Tell your friends. Toronto Star

Ravel is unflinching in her exploration of the moral and emotional conflicts of her characters and of the country in which they live, but the light she shines is as compassionate as it is clear-eyed, illuminating each characters full humanity and revealing the beating heart of the state of Israel as well as its wounded spirit Her seemingly simple and direct sentences often resonate with myriad meanings, possibilities and ironies [Ten Thousand Lovers] is a brave and beautiful book. Nancy Richler, The Globe and Mail

Deeply moving [The] narrative alternates between memoir and linguistic meditations on ancient and modern Hebrew. It is in these passages, conveyed in a quiet and almost lyrical voice, that the full tragic dimension of Israels character emerges. The New York Times

PENGUIN CANADA

YOUR SAD EYES AND

UNFORGETTABLE MOUTH

EDEET RAVEL is the author of a trilogy about the Israeli Palestinian conflictTen Thousand Lovers (finalist for the Governor Generals Literary Award), Look For Me (winner of the Hugh MacLennan Prize), and A Wall of Light (finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Regional Commonwealth Writers Prize and winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award). She is also the author of the Pauline series for younger readers, and of The Saver, for older teens.

Edeet was born on a kibbutz in Israel and has a PhD from McGill in Jewish Studies. She currently lives in Guelph with her daughter, Larissa. Visit her website at edeet.com.

ALSO BY EDEET RAVEL

Ten Thousand Lovers

Look For Me

A Wall of Light

FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS

The Thrilling Life of Pauline de Lammermoor

The Mysterious Adventures of Pauline Bovary

The Secret Journey of Pauline Siddhartha

The Saver

EDEET RAVEL

YOUR SAD EYES

AND UNFORGETTABLE

MOUTH

PENGUIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published in Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada),
a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2008
Published in this edition, 2009

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

Copyright Edeet Ravel, 2008

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the
prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publishers note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product
of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in Canada.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Ravel, Edeet, 1955
Your sad eyes and unforgettable mouth / Edeet Ravel.

ISBN 978-0-14-316997-0

I. Title.

PS8585.A8715Y69 2009 C813.54 C2009-902206-0

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For Larissa

kindest of souls,

brilliant and wise

There is a name for us now: we can, if we wish, call ourselves the second generation. We have websites; books have been written about us. But back then we were alone with our parents, and they were alone with their survival. Limping and stunned, they returned from the Nazi camps. How does one reconcile that world and this one? No one has the answer. It seems impossible, and yet they forged new lives; but even those who had not lost their minds had lost their orientation.

One way or another, we, their children, inherited fragments of their memories. We were the children who came to reclaim the world, proxies for ghosts. Hovering always between resistance and compliance, we did what we could.