Memory s Tailor

By Lawrence Rudner

Alexandr Davidowich Berman has made his living sewing costumes for the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad. Old, weary, and alert to anti-Semitism, he has retired. Although he has shut himself up in his tiny... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1578060907
• ISBN13: 9781578060900
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Length: 297 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Outstanding and captivating novel

Memory's Tailor is one of the finest and most touching novels that I read this year. Rudner's narrative is captivating in its detail and emotional quality. I highly recomend this book.

The story of two men who bear witness to human events.

Berman, the hero of the novel and I believe to be Rudner's alter-ego in the beginning of the story is a reclusive non-person- a persona he has had to affect in order to survive in the anti-semetic climate of the Soviet Union prior to perestroika. Berman's character develops as he realizes that those who witness the inhumanitites exacted upon individuals by the state must record and preserve the memory of these events. He learns that these tragedies are compounded when the victims and their stories are forgotten. In developing the characters,Berman and Zorin, the author tells us, often with great humor, of their most unusual Odyssey, and their enounters with many memorable characters whose stories cried out to be chronicled and remembered. Berman, a tailor,formerly worked for the Kirov ballet repairing costumes. He is called upon to help repair costumes from the period of Catherine the Great,by the museum curator. He goes back to work reluctanly. While sewing the costumes Berman meets and develops a wonderful relationship with a char woman. Her death than causes Berman to reach back, upon his long forgotten faith, and eventually become a witness to all that he hears. Many unusual event are experienced by Zorin, a retired glassblower, recruited by Berman to aid him in his plan and as they cross the Urkraine and Russian countryside together. The characters they encounter are so wonderful and so alive, and their stories so interesting, that I as a reader also became part of their journey. This novel, completed before the death of Lawrence Rudner in 1995, is his second novel was beautifully edited by John Kessel and Susan Ketchin. The message that Rudner so forcefully relates in this very human story is one that is so important; to listen, to record, and to witness.