On Bittersweet Place Review in the Jewish Daily Forward

Ronna Wineberg’s (AFP ‘04 Fiction) novel questions identity and historical change in a coming of age story

“As Ronna Wineberg’s novel "On Bittersweet Place” opens, the Czernitski family is escaping Russia. Revolution is in the air, and the family fears religious persecution. In the prologue, set in 1922, Lena, the young narrator of the book, spells out the fears she associates with living in the United States.

Those anxieties carry through over the course of the rest of the novel, which jumps forward a few years from the beginning. By now, Lena is a teenager in Chicago with a talent for art and a curiosity about the city around her. Familial tensions inform her quotidian interactions. The juxtaposition of Lena’s coming of age with the period setting unfolds in ways that are sometimes unexpected. And it’s that aspect of Wineberg’s novel, combined with the understated yet forceful voice of her protagonist, which makes this work memorable.” – Tobias Carroll for the Jewish Daily Forward. 

Join us this Friday, October 10, 7:00 PM for a reading with Ronna at Barnes and Noble: 150 East 86th Street (at Lexington Avenue) in New York City.