The Cure for Grief.

Hermann, Nellie (author).

Hermann prefaces her first novel with a passage from the biblical book of Deuteronomy: “Choose life that thou mayest live.” Ten-year-old Ruby’s father, a Holocaust survivor, echoes this sentiment in his often-articulated advice to Ruby and her three older brothers, “Life is the highest good; whenever it is possible, choose life.” It is not life, however, but death and other losses that will occupy much of the next 10 years of Ruby’s increasingly Job-like life, inviting her to wonder if there is a cure for the grief that overwhelms her. Filled with serious purpose, Ruby’s relentlessly unhappy story doesn’t make for easy reading; it is almost claustrophobic in its microscopic examination of Ruby’s inner life, and some readers may question the redemptive value of the epiphany she finally achieves—or that events conspire to offer her. And yet the book is inarguably well written and clearly deeply felt by its author. Accordingly, readers who enjoy serious, though occasionally overly self-conscious, literary fiction will embrace it.