A recent spinal scare of my own, with the frightening uncertainties it made for, had me especially interested in reading Eric Silberstein's “In Berlin,” in which his protagonist, 20-something software engineer Anna, looks to have suffered a spinal stroke.
Fortunately, in my own case further diagnostic testing suggested that the apparent abnormality was just that, an abnormality – knock on wood – but in Anna’s case her stroke proves to be very much the real thing and leaves her a tetraplegic requiring around-the-clock hospital care and constant vigilance over things that might hurt her body without her knowing it.
“A wrinkle in a sheet pressing into her, a crease in her gown under her weight in the wheelchair, friction on her skin,” anything could be the occasion for a health emergency from a condition so devastating that it has one of the similarly afflicted patients at the hospital so bitter that he wishes he’d drowned from the swimming accident that left him in his condition.
If he had the guts, he’d go to Switzerland, he tells Anna, who for all the direct and indirect consequences of her situation, including a break-up with her lover, Julia, can’t abide giving up, even as she hears of someone whose leg was savaged by a rat without his ever being aware of it – an ever-present danger, again, from a spinal condition.
An inconceivably rare condition for a person so young, thinks Anna’s health aide, a would-be doctor herself and Syrian refugee who shares Anna’s sexual predilection but for whom the inclination makes for an even greater issue, what with her culture’s aversion to homosexuality.
All in all, a compelling read for me, Silberstein’s novel, particularly as I say with my recent health scare, even if I was left pretty much clueless by many of the software references, which will no doubt be more understandable to younger, more technologically oriented readers.

I adored this book and read it in two days. The rich character development, the moving plot, the myriad of emotions, all captured me. It had the heart and complexity of one of my favorite novels, "The Covenant of Water." I was rooting for Anna and Batul throughout the whole story. I've been thinking a lot about the ending and while I wish it was different, I understand why the author wrote it the way he did. This is a book I will be thinking about long after the last page. Well done!