Carrots and Jaffas. Howard Goldenberg

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      Praise for Carrots and Jaffas

      ‘A tale of abduction and heartbreak at its most immediate level of involvement, Carrots and Jaffas is also an engaging study of individual identity and its sources. Boldly plotted, diligently crafted, Howard Goldenberg’s story of identical twins, violently parted at the age of ten, reveals the hunger that dwells in all of us to stand distinct in the gaze of God. The book goes further still, for when the maelstrom of the abduction has passed, we are left to ponder the mystery of belonging, and the role of love as the great agent of our survival.’

      Robert Hillman

      ‘With his customary gusto, Howard Goldenberg continues his investigation into what it means to be born into the unique and ancient landscape of Australia when your spiritual tradition – in his case, Orthodox Judaism – comes from somewhere else.’

      Martin Flanagan

      ‘Goldenberg’s story is operatic in tone and scope. A kidnapped twin boy is but one victim as vexed issues confronting reconciliation with indigenous Australia unfold. The heart of this high octane tale, for all its puckish humour, is impelled by great moral seriousness: one cognisant that the entitlement to the fuzzy choral warmth of “calling Australia home” demands sacrifice.’

      Rod Moss

      ‘There was so much I liked about Carrots and Jaffas, so much that made me think afresh. A gesture of healing of that great and terrible national wound of the stolen generation from an entirely fresh perspective, Goldenberg’s novel brims with insight and wisdom.’

      Simon Cleary

      ‘Howard Goldenberg’s Carrots and Jaffas is a story of mothers cheated of their young. It is a sensitively crafted tale of twin boys wrenched apart and the mothers who care for them. This tale of cultures meeting and merging brings to life the northern Flinders Ranges – its characters, its landscape and its traditions.’

      Kristin Weidenbach

      A NOVEL

      Howard Goldenberg

      Published by Hybrid Publishers

      Melbourne Victoria Australia

      ©Howard Goldenberg 2014

      This publication is copyright. Apart from any use

       as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be

       reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the

       publisher. Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction should be

       addressed to the Publisher, Hybrid Publishers,

       PO Box 52, Ormond 3204.

      First published 2014

      National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

       Author: Goldenberg, Howard.

      Title: Carrots and Jaffas / Howard Goldenberg.

      ISBN: 9781925000122 (paperback)

      9781742983325 (ebook)

      Subjects: Twins – Fiction.

      Kidnapping – Australia – Fiction.

      Dewey Number: A823.4

      Cover design: Gittus Graphics ©

      Cover painting by Craig Penny ©

      The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any

       resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

       For Miles and Toby

      Author’s Disavowal

      With two exceptions, nobody you know, living or dead, appears in this work; the characters are otherwise entirely imaginary. The exceptions are Talcum Malcolm, derived from ‘Talc Alf’, sculptor, philosopher and amateur etymologist of Lyndhurst, South Australia; and Sahara, the whippet-Staffordshire terrier cross who belonged to my late brother Dennis. Although I have tried, I have fallen short of creating on the page the true aggressiveness and malice of this real-life bitch. Sahara menaced everyone she met but she adored Dennis, whose charity exceeded even Sahara’s malignity.

      Nature …

       Why hast thou made us but in halves –

       Co-relatives? This makes us slaves …

       What Cosmic jest or Anarch blunder

       The human integral clove asunder

       And shied the fractions through life’s gate?

      From ‘After the Pleasure Party: Lines Traced Under an

       Image of Amor Threatening’, by Herman Melville

      My mother groaned, my father wept,

       Into the dangerous world I leapt …

      From ‘Infant Sorrow’, Songs of Experience, by William Blake

      ‘Are the twins identical, Peter?’

      ‘One is, Rabbi, one isn’t.’

      Snatches of conversation overheard at a double bris ceremony

      My heart and my mind, my bones and flesh and all the organs of my

       body are bound together with the cords of the stories I was told.

      From The Honey Thief, by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman

       Part 1