Where To Find Me: Alba Arikha - Tapa blanda

One hopes, one hunts, for a book that resembles nothing one has read before. Alba Arikha's Soon is not only a true original, it's beautiful, moving, and, yes, profound. Which makes it a rare creature indeed. -- Michael Cunningham The looping structure and urgent storytelling of Where To Find Me pull the reader into the strange mechanics of our lives, by which historical cataclysms, dumb accident, momentary whims, and inexplicable desires act to bring us together or keep us apart. -- Siri Hustvedt Her parents were close friends of Samuel Beckett, who became Alba's god-father and encouraged her to write. Beckett's influence... can be found in her writing. [Where to Find Me] is an ambitious and satisfying novel. * Times Literary Supplement * Best books of 2018: Where to Find Me is a short novel that feels longer in the best kind of way. Arikha is shaping up to be a major writer, if she isn't one already. * The Evening Standard * Urgent storytelling * Siri Hustvedt * Elegant in style, complex and circular in construction, the story of Flora Dobbs comes to us via her unlikely friendship with a London teenager. Two worlds, two eras: an evocative and subtle novel. * Lawrence Osborne * Told in the same carefully-wrought, limpid prose that distinguished Arikha's memoir of her teenage years, Major/Minor, itself a marvellous book. The author, who is the daughter of renowned Franco-Israeli painter Avigdor Arikha, and also Samuel Beckett's goddaughter, has written a beautiful, haunting novel that goes to the heart of questions of identity and belonging. -- Ian Thomson The interlinked narratives, voices in counterpoint, harmonise and diverge as Hannah reflects on her own family tragedy and debunks, through her investigation, some of Flora's articles of faith. Richly drawn characters, gorgeous language and the way it folds history delicately within the story of an individual life. -- Amanda Dennis * Jewish Quarterly * Where to Find Me, the fifth book by Alba Arikha, is the fascinating story of the lives of two women who are destined to become far more important to each other than they could ever have imagined, as well as of the intersecting lives of those closest to them. * Nudge Magazine * The story is captivating. She layers chance encounters upon long-grasped secrets and lies; spins mystery and myth out of her characters' clashes with some of the most traumatic history of the 20th century, and explores the legacy of betrayal and tragedy. -- Lucy Scholes * The National * Aching and luminous * David Flusfeder * In a book of many secrets and clandestine activities, the final clue lies in the title. There are traces of poetry and painting - including a meticulous attention to colour in passages describing Paris, Jerusalem and London. -- Amanda Hopkinson * The Jewish Chronicle *

Hannah Karalis, a teenager living with her family in 1980s Notting Hill, becomes fascinated by her neighbour, Flora Dobbs, an enigmatic elderly woman who has clearly had an interesting past - but the improbable friendship that the two strike up is abruptly cut short by Flora's sudden departure from the neighbourhood. Eighteen years later, Hannah is astonished to receive a black notebook, which sets her on a quest to discover the truth and to confront the ghosts of an unresolved past. A gripping and poignant tale of chance encounters, tangled lies and painful discoveries, Where to Find Me is an inspiring account of how to face and overcome the effects of loss and tragedy in our daily lives.