BARRINGTON – “Whoever said ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover,’  obviously never worked in a bookstore,” said Celeste Nadien, store manager for Barrington Books. She and her coworkers judge books by their covers every day – and those judgments determine whether they will read and recommend those books. 

When Barrington Books employee Wendy Lapides was shelving An Almost Perfect Moment, she was intrigued by the book’s cover and thought the book would be a thought-provoking read. The front cover of the book depicted a row of brownstone houses – the kind that you would find in Brooklyn, with a small statue of the Virgin Mary sitting on one of the front lawns. The back cover stated that the book was the story of a Jewish teenager. 

“I was intrigued by the juxtaposition of the Virgin Mary and the Jewish teen,” said Lapides, who read the book, loved it, and contacted the book’s author, Binnie Kirshenbaum. Kirshenbaum was appreciative of Lapides’ kind words, and the two kept up their correspondence, which began in 2004. When Lapides sold a copy of An Almost Perfect Moment, she would write to Kirshenbaum. Other coworkers from Barrington Books began to e-mail Kirshenbaum to share with her their praise for An Almost Perfect Moment.

When in May 2009 Kirshenbaum published her next novel, The Scenic Route, she had her publicist fit Barrington Books into her tour. On Saturday, June 13, Kirshenbaum arrived at the bookstore for a long-awaited reading and signing.

Attendees sat in rows of folding chairs at the front of Barrington Books as Kirshenbaum read from the opening of The Scenic Route. 

The Scenic Route tells the story of Sylvia Landsman, a middle-aged woman who receives a letter from her job notifying her of her termination. The character’s response to the news is to tour Europe with a man named Henry with whom she takes up a romance. The reader gets to know Sylvia mostly through her conversations with Henry as he too gets to know her.

Many of the devoted fans in attendance at the reading were as eager to have their questions answered as tweens might be about the chance to have a moment’s attention from their favorite pop star. 

Questions ranged from “What’s your favorite book?” (A High Wind in Jamaica, by Richard Hughes) to “What do you think happened to the character of Miriam after the end of An Almost Perfect Moment?” 

When asked how she came up with the idea for An Almost Perfect Moment, Kirshenbaum said that the phrase “what a face” repeatedly popped into her head, and she decided to create a protagonist with a face so tranquil and beautiful that she is often compared to the Virgin Mary.

Most of the questions asked by the group were in regard to An Almost Perfect Moment, a perennial staff favorite at Barrington Books, and a frequent book club recommendation. Kirshenbaum has authored six novels in total, in addition to two short-story collections. She was one of three nominees for The National Jewish Book Award, and two of her novels, including An Almost Perfect Moment, were chosen as Notable Books of the Year by The Chicago Tribune.

During the signing, Kirshenbaum was asked if she edits herself as she writes, to which she replied that she will start to write something and then think that if she were grading a student’s paper, she’d put a circle around the words and then cross them out. In an interview with HarperCollins Publishers, Kirshenbaum admitted that the thread of being “Jewish but not really” is present in several of her novels and is synonymous with being an outsider. 

Kirshenbaum grew up in Westchester, N.Y., where her family was one of the only Jewish families in town. Kirshenbaum intensifies the sense of isolation of her characters by distancing them from their religion – which could have at least served to give them a sense of identity or belonging to a group.

Kirshenbaum received a B.A. from Columbia University and an M.F.A. from Brooklyn College. She is a professor of fiction writing at the Columbia University Graduate School of the Arts.