The strength of Oberman's first collection, and of his vision, lies in the juxtaposing of two worlds: the physical and the spiritual. The bleakness of every day life is real, and predominates, in these stories. Equally real is the possibility that the prophet Elijah can be present, invisible at the Passover seder or dancing and singing in the back lane and pretty scary for a ten-year-old. Either way - a miracle.
Oberman's stories are linked through a group of reappearing characters and through a common setting-north Winnipeg in the early '60's. The drug/protest/flower culture we associate with that decade has not arrived in this stretch of north Main Street inhabited by a multicultural community of first, second or more generation Canadians. Some of them still have memories of living and suffering in a different country and a different time. They try to make a living as proprietors of a dress shop, waitress at the Popularity Grill, butcher in a meat shop, projectionist and ticket taker at the local movie house. Their striving and suffering are ordinary and unsensational and poignant; success is never assured.
Oberman also links his stories by reintroducing an incident from a previous story, illuminating it from a fresh perspective. This technique heightened, for me, the sense of separateness within community.
Ten-year-old Danny Stein whose parents own the clothing shop, is the youngest character. His desire to rid himself of childhood and break free of ignorance is one of the book's themes. "There was nothing I could say. .. I didn't know the words," he says. "I didn't know anything." He's a solitary boy, a tempting prey for bullies and without friends of his own age until the very last story.
We see him mainly in the company of adults, who, like him, have limited knowledge and feel shackled - to their jobs, their families or the past. They are less than ideal models. Among his guides for passage to physical and spiritual awakening are Rita, the waitress, and Old Man Werner, who in eastern Europe aspired to study the Torah, but in Winnipeg must settle for being owner/caretaker of the block Danny's family lives in.
From Rita Danny learns both the ecstasy of desire and the bitterness of betrayal. She inspires him to believe, "I only had to break free of my child- hood and she'd be waiting." But then she leaves, without a backward glance, lured by a streak of chrome and the blare of a car horn.
Old Man Werner teaches Danny about the other world: "They used to say that in the beginning the Two Worlds were side by side, that everybody was understood by everybody. You spoke with angels lust like with the neighbors. . . Now hardly anything is clear." Certainly it's not clear to Danny, who wants to understand that other world in terms of popular magic and the Spider-Man of his comic books.
After his parents confiscate those comic books because he's too old for them, Danny discovers that in his own life "There was so much to turn into stories." He becomes the magician who by telling Mr. Werner about his boring and anxious summer vacation transforms it. But he must also learn that stories aren't just romantic adventure. Old Man Werner's stories of Ba'al Shem Tov and his power to call down miracles are one thing; his agonizing account of the Rabbi brutalized and murdered by villagers in the Polish shtetl are quite another.
Not all of Oberman 's stories have the power of "The Projectionist's Wife" with its sympathetic portrayal of Grete Klatt and its reminder that the sins of the holocaust continue to haunt not just the victims and the perpetrators but also their children, no matter what country they move to. But the collection has been carefully shaped so that there is a building up, and even the slighter stories contribute to the vision that people can rise, like Elijah, "above the garbage cans and above the net of telephone wires to shape and reshape (themselves) high above the sun." There is assurance that Danny Stein, like Sheldon Oberman, will be given vision and language for a succession of life-affirming stories.