Eve's Apple

A first novel by the cultural editor of the Jewish newspaper Forward. Joseph meets Ruth at college; he is a shy intellectual haunted by his young sister's suicide, she is an unstable artist given to wild mood swings. Ruth also suffers from eating disorders, and Joseph becomes obsessed with helping her. Through the ministrations of a psychiatrist whom he at first engages for Ruth, however, Joseph comes to see that Ruth's appeal has as much to do with his own traumas as with hers.