The Dead Man
“Gold adventures in difficult emotional terrain and achieves something beautiful, transformative, and life-affirming. The conclusion of The Dead Man elevates and transforms all the events of the novel. It is as if Eve (the heroine) and the reader had traveled a tortuous terrain, paying attention to every step but not noticing that they were ascending. Now that the summit has been reached, the look back reveals not ugliness but beauty.”
– Maria Bloshteyn, Los Angeles Review of Books
“The Dead Man is a wonderfully affecting, memorable, and original tale. Nora Gold is a natural storyteller, and her ability to make us understand the shimmering and complex landscape of love has its haunting echoes in the Israeli landscape. This is an ingeniously and gorgeously crafted story, radiantly musical in its rich textures.”
– Jay Neugeboren, author of The Stolen Jew, Imagining Robert, and Max Baer and the Star of David
The Dead Man was chosen as one of the “Top 10 Books of 2017” by UK book blogger “Left on the Shelf” (along with David Grossman’s A Horse Walks Into A Bar and 8 others)
The Dead Man is a compelling novel about a woman who is obsessed. Eve, who is both a composer of sacred music and a music therapist, is well aware of the saying, “Physician, heal thyself,” but she just can’t seem to do this. For some unknown reason, she — a sensible, intelligent professional — cannot recover from a brief relationship she had five years ago with a world-famous music critic named Jake. She also cannot finish the music composition she started around then. This obsession with Jake is a mystery to Eve’s friends, and also to her. In an attempt to put this relationship behind her, she returns to Israel where Jake still lives, and where they first fell in love. There she revisits all their old haunts, and gradually the dark mystery behind their complex relationship begins to unravel.