Light Years

January 17, 2005
Because Maya Laor, who narrates, happens to be running late for a date in Tel Aviv, she narrowly escapes being killed by a suicide bomber. Instead, her boyfriend Dov, who is waiting for her in a restaurant, dies in the explosion. To escape reminders of Dov's death and other acts of violence that continue to plague her nation, Maya leaves Israel to attend an American university. However, even on a peaceful Southern campus among students eager to be her friend, Maya can't let go of the fear, grief and guilt that have become a heavy burden. In this sensitively wrought first novel, Stein alternates flashbacks of Maya's experiences as an Israeli soldier and the events that lead to the bombing, with more reflective scenes on the quiet campus of the University of Virginia. Interfusing the past with the present, the author explores both the cause and effect of Maya's psychological turmoil, revealing why the teen feels personally responsible for her boyfriend's death and showing how, once in America, Maya resists becoming involved in intimate relationships in order to avoid getting hurt again. Stein's sensitive treatment of intense subject matter and her compassionate depiction of a scarred survivor make this book a moving and insightful novel. Ages 14-up.

January 1, 2005
Gr 9 Up -Haunted by the death of her boyfriend, a victim in a suicide bombing for which she feels responsible, Maya Laor struggles through her first year of astronomy studies at the University of Virginia. She misses Israel and her family and desperately tries to avoid connecting with anyone, including the handsome TA, Justin Case, who is working hard to get to know her. In chapters alternating between the Virginia present and her Israeli past, 20-year-old Maya tells her own story. She marvels at the unconscious privilege and seemingly unfounded fears of her college classmates, and remembers the excitement of her military service and her first love affair. These two cultures are light years apart. When her habit of running alone leads to a broken ankle, she realizes that she has made good friends who care about her and whom she cares about. This well-paced first novel, a moving study of grief and recovery, is also a love story that should appeal particularly to students interested in other ways of seeing the world and looking forward to their own college lives." -Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC"

Copyright 2005 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2004
Gr. 8-12. Maya, 20, blames herself for the death of her boyfriend, who is killed by a suicide bomber in a Tel Aviv restaurant. Haunted by grief and guilt, she leaves Israel for college in the U.S., but although she makes friends, studies, and even begins to fall in love and have sex again, she can't forget. The first-person narrative moves eloquently back and forth between Maya's American present and her Israeli past: growing up in Israel, serving in the army, working in a Tel Aviv office, falling in love, and finally, losing someone in a shocking bombing. Most characters in this novel, one of the first about a contemporary Israeli young woman in a high-tech, secular world, are drawn with some complexity. Maya's "healing" seems a little preachy, but there's depth to her character: she's needy and angry, sarcastic and warm. She also loves her country, yet she doesn't talk politics. Though she considers the Palestinians as "those" people over the border ("They hated us"), she doesn't always focus on herself as living in a war-torn place. Of course, one book isn't enough to tell the whole story of the Middle East, so recommend this with books listed in the accompanying Read-alikes column, which speak from the diverse viewpoints of young Arabs and Jews caught up in the violence.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)