So begins a journey that sees Mina and her older brother Jossel leaving their family for the New World. They make it as far as Liverpool before an unexpected marriage, the outbreak of World War I, and a second marriage proposal get in the way of their American Dream, and the book then follows them and their descendants as they navigate life in twentieth-century Britain.

Jonathan Freedland exploring Jewish identity in fiction from Amos Oz, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen & Jonathan Safran Foer Howard Jacobson delivering a lecture on Why We Need The Novel and talking to Philip Dodd about his dystopian novel J And those characters do, indeed, develop and change as the novel progresses. I found myself rapidly warming to Mina and her family, and becoming genuinely invested in their story. As Jewish immigrants, we follow them as they gradually assimilate into British life and culture whilst also remaining at the periphery of it, forever connected with their past and the homeland they left behind. The novel also takes in the pogroms and wars in Latvia, and the devastating effect that this had upon the Jewish community. The family’s story also touches upon several other major geo-political events, with younger brother Itzik (very much the villian of this fairy story) cropping up in an unusual – and controversial – position later on in the book. I wished I felt a stronger emotional reaction to the ending, but all in all I enjoyed this book and there was no dull moment in the book. Highly recommend this not just to historical fiction fans but anyone looking for an engaging read that is not too big. I enjoyed this book immensely. The beginning is immediately gripping: shades of Little Red Riding Hood as Mina goes into the forest to collect mushrooms. She meets a group of young Bolshevik men and, while we can breathe a sigh of relief as she comes to no obvious harm, it's a life-changing - even life-saving - experience.The adventure leads to flight, emigration and a new land, a new language and the pursuit of idealism or happiness – in Liverpool. But what of the stories from the old country; how do they shape and form the next generations who have heard the well-worn tales? Linda Grant (1951- ; active 1993-) was born in Liverpool, England. Both her Liverpool roots and her Jewish heritage (she is the child of a Polish-Jewish father and Russian-Jewish mother) are reflected in her fiction. She studied English at the University of York, before completing postgraduate work in Canada. I thought I would be dnf-ing this as I trudged through the first few chapters. I didn’t find young Mina and Jossel compelling or likeable and thought the writing style, further faulted by some abounding typos, was stilted and arching for a resonance and depth of meaning it failed to achieve. However I found that some of the fault laid in my own expectations, as I went into the book thinking it would be mystical, poetic and bucolic and it delivered a very small amount of that. You see we have so little of the past except of course memories and fairy stories because we came from a regime where you couldn't trust what was inside your own head, your soul had been taken into public ownership, you doubted your own recollection, that was just the way it was, you accepted it, what could you do? So we had a coffee pot and we had a story and the story was ours. It didn't belong to the People, but to us. Was it true? At the time it didn't matter. The audience was arriving. There were old-timers nostalgic for the films of their youth, students of cinema, young lovers, couples who had nowhere else to go on this rainy evening, solitary types like himself, their purposes inscrutable. Of everyone in the half-empty cinema, the atmosphere heavy with the smoke of cheap cigarettes, only Itzik knew how false the movie was. He had been there, he had seen everything, it was nothing like this, nothing.

And from there we follow the story of Mina and her extended family over several generations through to the present day – the family gradually assimilating into English culture (moving to the suburbs from a Jewish district, changing their names – even in the case of another key character Mina’s daughter Paula adopting a BBC RP style of speech which takes her to London and to work with a small film studio) while also never really being fully part of it. A Baltic forest in 1913, Soho and the suburbs of Liverpool and the Jewish community that grows up there are the settings for Linda Grant's new novel The Story of the Forest. She joins presenter John Gallagher, Rachel Lichtenstein and Julia Pascal for a conversation about writing and Jewish identity in the North West as we also hear about Julia Pascal's play Manchester Girlhood and look at the re-opening of the Manchester Jewish Museum with curator Alex Cropper . The end of the novel does little to tie up the many threads created, instead emphasising the complexity of family history, even before the grand narrative of the twentieth century is taken into account. A younger descendant in the modern day begins to explore the Mendel family history, and even some of the foundational stories that have been threaded through the book are called into question. History is presented as a shifting thing, a collection of stories we tell each other that help us get through difficult and complex times but never point to a definitive truth.

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Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? A grain merchant’s family uproot themselves from their life in Riga and are scattered. Like seeds on the wind, some will make it to fertile ground and others will find themselves in inhospitable terrain, or buffeted here and there by unpredictable currents, some destructive, some surprisingly helpful. Linda Grant’s ninth novel continues her exploration of how chance, contingency and unintended consequences intersect with history’s larger movements; how personal narratives are shaped not merely by what we think of as inescapable forces and events, but by moments of randomness and whimsy. Her characters are, as ever, mobile not only in a geographical sense, but in the way that their desires and motivations shift and adapt, influenced by memories of the past and intimations of the future. Dr Rachel Lichtenstein is a writer, curator who teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University and is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester’s Centre for Jewish Studies Golden Age by Wang Xiaobo regarded as one of China’s modern masterpieces. The novel is a smart sature of the Cultural Revolution which was published in 1992 but only now available in its first full English translation . Xialou Guo, the award winning author of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, talks to Alex about the Wang Xiaobo's radical and unique style of writing.

The novel’s language evolves with the period it covers, from the simple language of a folk tale to the coolly wry prose of a mid-century novelist, such as Elizabeth Taylor, and then to a looser, more dialogue-heavy style as social conventions ease, marriages break down, and Valium is ratcheted to a frightening roar. Throughout the novel, the characters concern themselves with the ordinary preoccupations of ordinary people: they marry, acquire homes and businesses, have children, and let those children go. They anglicize their names and slowly, over generations, become more integrated into English society. In most folktales it is intrepid young men who set out on a journey. Grant subverts this expectation, using the bids for freedom of Mina and later Paula as the catalysts for her narrative. Weaving together the personal and political to great effect, The Story of the Forest is a tale that encompasses most of the 20th century, touching on enduring themes of displacement, survival and the search for personal fulfilment.The story of the Mendels, as they travel from Riga to England and realise that this is not just a staging post on the way to their goal of America but the place where they must make their new lives, has some commonality with the journey of my maternal grandparents and the experience of immigrant arrival and gradual assimilation resonates with me. The characters are vivid and very credible. I liked Mina's bossy sister-in-law Lia whose practical approach got the family safely settled and later led them on to life in the suburbs, a process beautifully depicted. Their experiences in business and Mina's work in a munitions factory are also very well drawn. Itzik, the scheming younger brother who follows Mina into the forest and bears witness to her first kiss