Breakfast with the Ones You Love

by Eliot Fintushel

Bantam Books, $12.00, 275 pp

The cover by Stephen Youll shows a young woman from the cheekbones down, with Angelina Jolie lips, bracelets whose colors denote various virtues on her right arm, Goth stud jewelry on her left, a rocket ship and 2 stars dangling from her belt chain, and a comet in a crystal ball hovering between her hands.

Lea is 16, an orphan, and she inadvertently makes people sick or even kills them if she gets upset. To control her wild talent, she has cultivated a dead face, a frozen heart, and a ‘you don’t see me’ approach to apparel. She works as a dishwasher in a joint called the Wee Spot and lives in the home of a lonely old lady, Mrs. Bobson, whose own daughter died years ago in a car accident. Lea despises and ignores Mrs. Bobson, slipping in and out of the house when she is asleep. She also stiff-arms her boss, Sarge, and the waitress Sylvia. Tule, a cat, is her only companion. All this began to change the night she used her ability to kill to save the life of Yakov, a young man who frequents the Wee Spot. Now the two of them, the Yid and the Shiksie, as they call each other, are preparing a sacred space – a spaceship – in which a miracle can occur: the joining of the earthbound 13 and the 3 supernal souls, and their departure for the supernal Ishrael. Yakov is one of the 13. Lea wants to go along, and there is one extra berth for a translator, so she takes up languages. She also starts wearing eye-catching, heart-stopping outfits left behind by Mrs. Bobson’s daughter.

As she and Yakov are falling in love, everyone wants a piece of Lea. The mob wants to use her talent to ensure that a certain fight ends profitably. There is a mysterious stranger with a nose ring who is following Lea. Sylvia has her own agenda. And the Devil Himself wants to prevent the 13 and 3 from coming together and departing. He takes an increasingly active and direct role in interfering. Lea and Yakov have allies, however: the 10, the minyan, whose prayers power the spaceship, and whose interactions provide comic relief such as Shakespeare would envy.

I have one editorial quibble. On page 15, Lea says, “I’m not a goyim.” Is she supposed to be too ignorant of Yiddish to know goy is the singular form of the plural goyim? The trouble with grammatical errors, even in-character ones, is they annoy readers who know better; worse, they perpetuate and confirm the ignorance of readers who don’t.

Jack Dann’s review compares Fintushel to R.A. Lafferty and “P.G. Wodehouse (on speed) collaborating with Isaac Basheves Singer, Harlan Ellison, … and Barry N. Malzberg.” In other words, the writing is wry, acerbic, and drop dead funny, and sometimes it wrings your heart.

When you pick up this book, you’ve got a gem on your hands. – Chris Paige