About the Book
In 1939, the families in a remote Jewish village in Romania feel the war close in on them. Their tribe has moved and escaped for thousands of years, but now, there is nowhere else to go. At the suggestion of an eleven-year-old girl and a mysterious stranger who has washed up on the riverbank, the villagers decide to reinvent the world: deny any relationship with the known and start over from scratch. And for years, there is boundless hope. But the real world continues to unfold alongside the imagined one, and soon our narrator - the girl, grown into a young mother - must flee her village to find her husband and save her children, and propel them toward a real and hopeful future.
About the Author :
Ramona Ausubel grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine where she won the Glenn Schaeffer Award in Fiction. Her work was included in a list of '100 Other Distinguished Stories of 2008' in the Best American Short Stories and thrice as a 'Notable' story in the Best American Non-Required Reading. She was a finalist for the Pushcart Prize. She lives in Santa Barbara, California.
READER BIO
Laural began working in regional theater as an actor at the age of 17. She has done over 20 years of stage work, and 16 years of audio book narration, having narrated over 100 titles in all genres. In addition, Laural has directed well over 100 audio titles, providing expertise on both sides of the microphone. In acknowledgement for years of excellence at her craft, Laural has received AudioFile's 'Earphones Award' many times over.
Review :
""Merlington enhances Ausubel's deft character development by employing an equally subtle touch to vocally define personalities. She skillfully allows the author's lyrical prose to deliver all necessary drama and emotion. Listeners who embrace this unconventional story will be treated to a unique experience that lingers long after the work ends."" - AudioFile Magazine
""Laural Merlington reads the story wistfully and captures the strength and ingenuity of Lena as a girl, as a wanderer and as a believer."" - Sound Commentary
A Best Book of 2012. - Huffington Post
""...fantastical and ambitious...infused with faith in the power of storytelling."" - New York Times
""Ausubel uses the history of her own great grandmother as the framework for her first novel, which fully evokes the horrors of the Holocaust by merely touching on events. A fabulist tale of love, loss, faith, hope, community, and, especially, the power of story."" - Booklist
""A bittersweet fable of war and survival set in a Romanian shtetl...there's an undeniable element of talent here."" - Kirkus Reviews
""Ausubel has written a riveting, otherworldly story about an all-too-real war and the transformative power of community."" - Library Journal
""...a work of magical realism that calls upon the spirit of Gabriel Garcia Marquez from its first sentences...Ausubel breaks apart her characters' sense of safety and beliefs in slow motion, but she does it without ever sacrificing their souls."" - NPR
""Ramona Ausubel's debut, No One Is Here Except All of Us captures the magical group-think of a Romanian village that retreats into an imaginary reality at the outbreak of war."" - Vogue
""...a sustained magical realist fable where the characters also engage in self-conscious magical thinking."" - The Toronto Star
""...beautifully written in a flowing, lyrical prose...hauntingly poetic...No One is Here is an electric jolt, waking us up to remember what has been and what could be again."" - Relevant Magazine
""...lyrical and poetic...fascinating."" - BlogCritics.org
""In her debut novel, No One Is Here Except All of Us, Ramona Ausubel breaks new ground, with a unique prose style that weaves a classic immigrant tale into a world of dreams. The town of Zalischick and its citizens re-write their own story, filling it with magic, hope, and a determination in the face of destruction to find new ways to begin."" - Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief
""In her strange and lovely debut novel, Ramona Ausubel tells (slyly, sideways) of the horrors of war: A Romanian Jewish community dreams up a collective delusion about the world they live in. Rather than resist or run from events too insane to be real, they construct an elaborate game of make-believe which works, until it doesn't. I was unsettled and moved by this tale of the human imagination - its force, its failure and its regeneration."" - Danzy Senna, author of You are Free
""Here is a world created out of the most curious and beautiful remnants of our own: opera, suitcases, letters, rivers, daughters, strangers and shovels. Ramona Ausubel cracks open the very idea of a book and fills its shell with a thing glimmering, thrilling and new."" - Samantha Hunt, author of The Invention of Everything Else
""A special work of the imagination, an original gift, dark and light, and Ramona Ausubel colors it all with a glowing wisdom."" - Ron Carlson, author of Five Skies
""Beautifully written and alive in story, fascinating characters, and place. You can't help but compare Ausubel's book with Marquez, with her fantastic vision of history and invention, the small village dreaming the vast world, but she is her own new fresh voice."" - Brad Watson, author of The Heaven of Mercury
""A wise, compassionate book that even in its darkest turns uplifts."" - Christine Schutt, author of Florida and All Souls
