They Shall Not Pass

<p class=ql-align-justify><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)>Language is not for God but for man to get beyond his primitive feelings...</em></p><p class=ql-align-justify></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)>In Frederick Mark Kramer's </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)>They Shall Not Pass: A Novel of Manhattan and Madrid</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)> the interior ruminations of disembodied anonymous voices twist together in slow constant alternation and we gradually come to know four main figures: Jacobo an American who fought in the Spanish Civil War and then returned to New York; Esmeralda the woman he loved in Spain who unbeknownst to Jacobo later moved to New York with their child; Conchita her granddaughter an actress in experimental off-off-Broadway productions; and Joseph Jacobo's grandson by his later marriage who becomes Conchita's lover. The weave of their reflective monologues summons up with uncanny concreteness and detail an all-encompassing world: of their past loves and of the vast but intimate New York City they all shared.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify></p><p class=ql-align-justify><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)>A thought being thought but not felt is not a thought just a mirage...</em></p><p></p>