The Sonder Review - Issue7

Ladino, but again, it came late. And it might have been forced to put in more since it wasn’t really something I knew about when I originally wrote the stories.

Elena: The epigraph itself I think is wonderful, even in its brevity. I think it really encompasses a lot of what this collection is about. ‘Si los aniyos kayeron, los dedos kedaron. If the rings fall off, the fingers remain.’ It’s like, despite what these characters have endured, through generations, they remain, they continue on. Whether it is in the moment, or through inherited histories, it doesn’t matter what has been stripped away, life continues.

Rachel: There’s this stoicism, and a kind of grumpiness, in those proverbs which I like, but there’s also that humor, something funny.

Who says, ‘Oh yay, at least I’ve still got my fingers!’ You know what I mean? Or there’s another Ladino proverb, ‘May the snake who doesn’t bite me live a thousand years’, so assuming that everybody’s a snake, basically, the best you can get is a snake that doesn’t bite you.

So, that sort of perspective, and humor, is what I wanted to get at and what I appreciated, I guess.

Elena: Luck is also something which is featured very prominently in this collection. Lise says, for example, in ‘Leaving the Occupied Zone’ that ‘lucky isn’t quite the right word for her situation’ and later she recalls ‘the awareness – always – that it might’ve turned out otherwise.’ So luck becomes a double edged sword within these stories, a constant knowing of how precariously our lives are really lived. And it also creates a preoccupation with what might have been, whether better or worse, and how easily the other side of the coin might have landed up.

Rachel: Well I do think that it’s usually the people who aren’t lucky, or are in unlucky circumstances, who think about luck. And people whose lives are just very fortunate might think that they’ve done it all themselves. Like, ‘I deserve this! I’m great!’ But it’s really when you’ve been in a scary situation that you understand how much of it luck. Of course, some things you can play well, or you can be cautious. For instance Lise not to go register, right? And 17