A big thank you to Anna Belfrage for asking me to participate in this new blog hop and for Debra Brown for introducing me to Anna. Here are the questions and my answers that refer to my latest, as yet unpublished novel.
When and where is the story set?
The book I’m seeking agent representation for at the moment is set in the part of Russia that is now Lithuania sometime in the mid 19th Century, and is about a Jewish family who lived in one of the many, many shtetls (Jewish towns/ghettos) that existed there at the time. Chapter one is based on an anecdote told to me by my grandmother when I was a small child and started life as a short story that was shortlisted by Cinnamon Press for an award in 2012. You can read it in the anthology The Book of Euclid available from
What can you say about the main characters?
As opposed to the characters in my debut novel Mesmerised (set in the same time period but in Paris, France), who were mostly all well educated and cultured, the characters in this book are pretty much the opposite. I don’t want to give too much away about the story at this stage but it is told from three different points of view:
Hannah, the eldest daughter of Rabbi Isaac Aizenburg, his wife, Rachel
Rachel Aizenburg. and Hannah’s husband, Ginda Lavinsky.
Hannah had always been the ‘good child’, the one who helped look after her grandparents, her siblings and got lumbered with household chores whilst her mother fulfilled the role of the Rabbi’s wife in the community. After Hannah married Ginda, Rachel's (Hannah’s mother) perspective about her husband and her life in general changed and she became someone much truer to her core identity, shedding the outer layer of what was typical and expected and indulging in behavior that could be considered scandalous. Ginda’s personality is rough around the edges. He’s an orphan who had to fend for himself since very early childhood. His coupling with Hannah was not what he expected from an arranged marriage.
What is the main conflict?
Family members seeing things differently, doing things that affect others: love is not an easy game to play.
Now it's over to you Lisa Goll
Lisa Goll is a reformed publishing and marketing professional, aspiring novelist and chair of the writers' community, London Writers' Cafe. When not writing, working, talking or doing, Lisa can be found procrastinating on Twitter @LisasShare or blogging (sporadically) at http://lisasshare.tumblr.com.