Dear Great Book Guru, Last weekend I attended an amazing Fred Stroppel production THE BLIND TRUTH- the story of the life and music of Vinny St. Marten.  During the intermission, we were marveling at  Vinny’s incredible story - when someone mentioned a book  about a young writer  who took the stories of Russian émigrés, picking and choosing details to create new life stories.    It sounded interesting…are you familiar with it?     Fan of THE  BLIND TRUTH

Dear Fan of THE BLIND TRUTH,  What a great show and I just heard it will be performed again  in November.    Daniel DiPietro recommended A REPLACEMENT LIFE by Boris Fishman last month and I enjoyed it immensely. It is the slyly humorous and moving story of young Slava Gelman, an undervalued junior editor for a New York magazine who is convinced by his grandfather to write a restitution request for World War II reparations from the German government. Huge problem-  the old man has no basis for the claim, so Slava must use details from his decreased grandmother’s horrific wartime experiences. Soon he finds himself writing dozens of these life stories for neighbors and friends. The lines between truth and fiction cross while Slava struggles to reconcile loyalty to family,  aversion to fraud, fear of deportation, and a growing  pride in his writing.    Colorful characters and love interests abound but the novel’s greatest attraction for me lay in its portrayal of South Brooklyn’s Soviet émigré community.  Highly recommended!