Travelling with Gershom

An inventive, engaging, and intelligent book, Matthew Flaming’s The Kingdom of Ohio surprised, intrigued, and delighted me. Set primarily in New York in the early 1900s, Flaming tells the tale of Peter Force and Cheri-Anne Toledo, his narrator a present-day antiques dealer who uncovers an old photograph of the pair and relates their s tory to us. When we meet him, Peter has just arrived in New York and soon secures employment as a labourer, working underground digging subway tunnels. He meets Cheri-Anne, who is beautiful, sophisticated, and perhaps crazy. Even though he is unsettled by much of what she says, talking of kingdoms and of studying with the famous Nikola Tesla and of not knowing how she got to New York, Peter is attracted to Cheri-Anne and helps her as she tries to understand what has happened to her. As we follow them as they attempt to solve this mystery, we are presented with another. Who is the narrator, and how does he – or she – know so much about what happened to

We Are All Made of Glue raises questions of age, race, class, culture, religion, and politics as it explores the improbable friendship between Georgie Sinclair and Naomi Shapiro, recounting Georgie's struggle to deal with major changes in her life and her efforts to uncover the mysterious past of her elderly friend. Greed, hatred, love, passion, the end of the world, and more than perhaps you ever wanted to know about glue and other adhesives contribute to what could have been a confusing and cluttered journey from present-day London to World War II Europe, and through more than 60 years of Palestinian politics. But Lewycka guides us nicely, with only a few minor detours before reaching a well-crafted destination that draws together the various themes and sub-plots. That she does this so effectively is critical to the success of the book. Failing to do so would make the eccentricities of the characters and for a trade magazine feel totally contrived, a feeling which is raised a fe