It Never Entered My Mind

It Never Entered My Mind tells the story of the life of Lena Morel, a retired librarian in New York. She writes it as a set of four-line verses, grouped into sections, so the book moves a bit like a piece of music. Her lawyer finds the pages after she dies, and he is not sure if he should share them with anyone.Lena grew up in Brighton Beach with a strict Communist father. As a young woman in Manhattan, she joined protests, worked in bookshops, took drugs, and spent time on a farm commune in Vermont. Two people shaped her the most: Junius Cassel, a Black singer and music producer, and Sarah Kwamboka, a teacher from Kenya. Around them, Lena thinks about love, politics, why she keeps choosing to be alone, and what being Jewish really means to her. Her life was full of contradictions.She writes all this while her memory is fading. So the book is really about what is left: bits of poems, old songs, and jokes. The verses get shorter and plainer near the end. It is funny, honest, sad, and quiet. It asks a simple question: who are you, and who will remember you?