Aquarium
Translated from the Hebrew by Todd Hasak-Lowy
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (macmillan Publishers)
April, 2021
Lily and Dori Ackerman begin their lives as inseparable sisters in a secure mythic realm: their shared deafness. They regard the hearing as fish in an aquarium. Home is a junkyard paradise on the prairie overseen by a father who has made the disabled and damaged his life’s work.
The hammer of separation cracks their world open. Dory is forced into boarding school. Lily stays home. Life rushes in. Silence goes underground. Letters now communicate the allure of bodies—and words.
Aquarium is an exquisite and tantalizing novel that follows childhood’s darkest secrets from birth to maturity. It tells of homes that call us to return long after we stopped regarding them as homes; of covenants that take a lifetime to break; of true and lasting love. Aquarium is Yaara Shehori third book