The Waiting Room: A Novel

by Leah Kaminsky

Overview

“The Waiting Room is both haunted, and haunting.”—Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March

The Waiting Room unfolds over the course of a single, life-changing day, but the story it tells spans five decades, three continents, and one family’s compelling history of love, war, and survival

As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Dina’s present has always been haunted by her parents’ pasts. She becomes a doctor, emigrates, and builds a family of her own, yet no matter how hard she tries to move on, their ghosts keep pulling her back. A dark, wry sense of humor helps Dina maintain her sanity amid the constant challenges of motherhood and medicine, but when a terror alert is issued in her adopted city, her coping skills are pushed to the limit.

 

Interlacing the present and the past over a span of twenty-four hours, The Waiting Room is an intense exploration of what it means to endure a day-to-day existence defined by conflict and trauma, and a powerful reminder of just how fragile life can be. As the clock counts down to a shocking climax, Dina must confront her parents’ history and decide whether she will surrender to fear, or fight for love.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062490483
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/15/2016
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	494,673
File size:	594 KB

About the Author

Leah Kaminsky is poetry and fiction editor at the Medical Journal of Australia. She conceived and edited Writer, M.D., an anthology of contemporary doctor-writers. She is the author of We’re All Going to Die, the award-winning poetry collection Stitching Things Together, and collaborated on the number one Amazon bestseller Cracking the Code. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Editorial Reviews

Potent…. The Waiting Room is both haunted, and haunting.” — Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March and The Secret Chord

“An assured debut.... Compelling, moving and memorable.” — Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project

“A sharp novel…. Explores intergenerational trauma with approachable simplicity.” — Ilana Masad, Slate

“Vivid, riveting, authentic with emotion and conflict.” — Jerome Groopman, M.D.

“Kaminsky’s prose is deft and delicate, and this novel tackles the haunting of the Holocaust with a tough and remarkably unsentimental gaze.” — MJ Hyland, Man Booker Prizer shortlisted author of Carry Me Down

“The Waiting Room is a moving and riveting story of a woman perched between the shadow of the past and a fragile reality in her adopted homeland. In the tradition of the finest physician-novelists, Leah Kaminsky writes with precision, authenticity, and profound insight.” — Amy Gottlieb, author of The Beautiful Possible

“Leah Kaminsky is a writer on whom nothing is lost. There are many lives, many worlds, and many days in the single day she depicts in The Waiting Room. The novel is a masterful debut.” — Joseph Skibell, author of A Curable Romantic

“The personal, the political and the medical wrestle with history in this page-turning novel. An engrossing tale that is both acutely worldly and fiercely introspective.” — Danielle Ofri, MD, author of What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“She’s an evocative storyteller, and she’s sensitive to the intersections between physical and emotional pain and the way that memory intrudes upon daily reality.” — Kirkus

“Kaminsky uses the events of one day…to dramatize what it means to live under constant threat. … [She] brings Dina into sharp focus, while her ghostly mother serves as a strong secondary character, in order to vividly personalize stark news reports.” — Booklist

“[A] spectacular fiction debut…. A moving psychodrama.” — Jewish Telegraphic Agency

“The Waiting Room is about Jewish lives, past, present and future…. Readers get snippets of all these rich lives, and a tapestry of characters is born.… The story pulls you in.” — New York Journal of Books

“[Kaminsky] brings to the story so much verisimilitude, so much reality, that we can’t take our eyes off the page. Her descriptions are rich and vibrant . . . [Kaminsky] is able to weave the surreal throughout her story in such a way that scenes burgeon with timelessness.” — The Forward online

“The book offers enormous insights into being the child of survivors, but it is also a novel of Israel.” — Jweekly.com

“An evocative tale.” — Moment Magazine

From the Publisher

Kaminsky uses the events of one day…to dramatize what it means to live under constant threat. … [She] brings Dina into sharp focus, while her ghostly mother serves as a strong secondary character, in order to vividly personalize stark news reports.

Booklist

Potent…. The Waiting Room is both haunted, and haunting.

Geraldine Brooks

A sharp novel…. Explores intergenerational trauma with approachable simplicity.

Ilana Masad

The personal, the political and the medical wrestle with history in this page-turning novel. An engrossing tale that is both acutely worldly and fiercely introspective.

Danielle Ofri

An assured debut.... Compelling, moving and memorable.

Graeme Simsion

The Waiting Room is a moving and riveting story of a woman perched between the shadow of the past and a fragile reality in her adopted homeland. In the tradition of the finest physician-novelists, Leah Kaminsky writes with precision, authenticity, and profound insight.

Amy Gottlieb

Leah Kaminsky is a writer on whom nothing is lost. There are many lives, many worlds, and many days in the single day she depicts in The Waiting Room. The novel is a masterful debut.

Joseph Skibell

Kaminsky’s prose is deft and delicate, and this novel tackles the haunting of the Holocaust with a tough and remarkably unsentimental gaze.

MJ Hyland

Vivid, riveting, authentic with emotion and conflict.

Jerome Groopman

[Kaminsky] brings to the story so much verisimilitude, so much reality, that we can’t take our eyes off the page. Her descriptions are rich and vibrant . . . [Kaminsky] is able to weave the surreal throughout her story in such a way that scenes burgeon with timelessness.

The Forward online

The Waiting Room is about Jewish lives, past, present and future…. Readers get snippets of all these rich lives, and a tapestry of characters is born.… The story pulls you in.

New York Journal of Books

[A] spectacular fiction debut…. A moving psychodrama.

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

The book offers enormous insights into being the child of survivors, but it is also a novel of Israel.

Jweekly.com

An evocative tale.

Moment Magazine

Kaminsky uses the events of one day…to dramatize what it means to live under constant threat. … [She] brings Dina into sharp focus, while her ghostly mother serves as a strong secondary character, in order to vividly personalize stark news reports.

Booklist

Aug. 31, 2016
The daughter of Holocaust survivors contends with present-day violence in Israel and Palestine.When Dina wakes up one morning to radio warnings of a possible terrorist attack, she’s both worried and surprised: normally Haifa, her home, doesn’t see much violence. Dina is a doctor as well as the mother of a young boy, with a baby on the way. She’s afraid to let her son go off to school, but what else can she do? She kisses her son and husband goodbye and heads off to work. Kaminsky (Stitching Things Together, 2012, etc.) is also, like Dina, a doctor. She’s an evocative storyteller, and she’s sensitive to the intersections between physical and emotional pain and the way that memory intrudes upon daily reality. But Kaminsky may have bitten off more than she can chew in her first novel. This isn’t just a story about contemporary violence in Israel and Palestine. Dina is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. After enduring life in Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, her mother and father fled to Australia, where they raised their daughter. Reared on her mother’s stories of horror and war, Dina can’t seem to escape violence, no matter how far she flees. She spends much of the novel, which takes place over the course of a day, bickering with the ghost of her mother. As she drives to work or to her son’s school or to the shoemaker to fix a broken heel, her mother’s ghost tries to hold court. “Did I tell you how we slept in the same wooden bunk all those nights in Bergen-Belsen?” she will say. “You need to know these things, Dina.” But Dina is impatient and busy. “Not now, mother. I have to get back to work,” she says. “We can talk about this later.” Eventually, as the violence in her mother’s past begins to converge with the violence in Haifa, Dina is forced to contend with her mother. But their bickering seems more precious than moving, and it becomes tiresome. Then, Kaminsky’s prose is clotted with mundane details that detract from the heart of the novel. These asides—about putting on makeup, purchasing apples, etc.—are not only distracting, but they’re also boring, and they slow down the narrative. Dina’s story might have benefited from a little less schtick and a little more honest reckoning. An ambitious debut is bogged down in banalities and too-cute narrative tricks.

Kirkus Review