The Following review was contributed by: John Walsh

What happens to us when we die? Do we have the opportunity to make sense of our lives or just fade away? Is it possible that the ghosts of the dead surround us as we go about our normal lives? If they do, should we be paying them any attention?

These issues are in the background of Kfir Luzzatto’s pleasant new novel, Crossing the Meadow. Henry is mysteriously transported from his family life in America back to his childhood town in Italy. He is not sure what to do or why he is there, having apparently acted on a most uncharacteristic whim. He meets a young woman, Clara, who describes herself as a prostitute but who has had a significant impact on Henry’s early life. Together, they make sense of their surroundings and Henry comes to terms with his own death and his separation from his beloved family.

Along the way, Henry is sidetracked by an officious group of committee members who see the afterlife as a way of continuing their normal existence but ethereally – as a sort of comic counterpart to Dostoevsky’s very dark story ‘Bobok.’ We also meet a number of the living, from pompous academics to mischievous children to generally bad parents, at least some of whom get an appropriate comeuppance. Not all of these characters are brought into the narrative in an entirely integrated fashion but, by and large, the story hangs together.

The author’s name and background of living in Israel perhaps inevitably lend an additional degree of interest to the story and the idea of finding redress from beyond the grave. That his characters manage to accomplish their goals with a degree of compassion and perseverance suggests a commendable degree of wisdom and promises well for future books.