Musical moment, and other stories

Yehoshua Kenaz follows a young boy through the rites of passage in these four artfully composed stories. In "The Three-Legged Chicken" a man, now middle-aged, reflects on his first encounter with death - his grandfather's - and re-lives a child's confusion and pain. "Henrik's Secret" is the bittersweet tale of a youthful friendship which crosses over social boundaries and results in an explosion of perplexing and unwanted emotions. In the title story, the boy's violin becomes a two-edged sword in a struggle for independence against his doting mother. In "Between Night and Dawn" Kenaz explores adolescent cruelty and the first stirrings of lust as experienced by a group of friends and schoolmates during a weekend wilderness outing. In all of these stories Kenaz details the slow erosion of childhood innocence and the inevitable intrusion of worldly knowledge.