Eva and Eve

Memory Speaks, But It Doesn’t Always Tell the Truth

Eva and Eve: A Search for My Mother’s Lost Childhood and What a War Left Behind By Julie Metz Atria Books; 320 pages; $28 The Eve in the title was Julie Metz’s mother, a rare example in her day of a woman who managed to have it all. She rose to the position of art director at Simon & Schuster while raising a family, running their city apartment and country house, cooking meals, doing laundry, preparing tax forms, and on and on. She was a formidable woman, who was more feared than loved by her daughter. The two tussled throughout the latter’s childhood and eventually settled into a calmer relationship that was, for Julie, no more satisfying, characterized as it was by her conscious avoidance of conflict and “without the full abandon we probably both craved.” The Eva in...

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Fiction // Blue

The adults had been there for hours—the ones from out of town for days—and they all seemed happy, huddled in little groups that opened up whenever I passed to let me in. They were offering me a space to receive their congratulations and slurred life advice. I smiled gamely and kept walking through my grandparents’ house—through the sunroom, past the living room picture window, past the silver platters of food, the crystal decanters with little nametags chained around their necks. I had nowhere to go. I had changed out of my bar mitzvah suit into an aqua leisure suit with a polyester shirt depicting a crowded seafloor scene. I had blow-dried and sprayed my hair into a kind of helmet. I was ready for someone my age to show up. I was ready for a...

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