Harry has only four years living with his family in a small town north of England, is the last child of a Jewish family, the perpetually drunk father squanders his miserable salary, how can the mother strives to make ends meet.
E 'mother, as often happens, the core of the family, one that tries to get it to work, to bring a bit' of joy and serenity among her children. And the mother run the house will collect the fruits and vegetables thrown on the ground to the market because not all good and will open in a bedroom of his house a little shop. A place that will become a meeting place between women, a way to pass time and get together.
But in addition to poverty there is another problem: the family lives on a street: on the one hand the houses inhabited by Jewish families, the other Christian families and between them a wall, invisible but impassable.
Harry, unknowingly, is found to be the messenger of a forbidden love between a boy considered a Christian and a Jewish girl. When this love will be discovered will be a tragedy for the family: she will be away from home forever.
Harry's sister, Lily, falls in love with a boy Arthur Christian. Their will be a long, tough but clandestine love that will challenge prejudice and mentality of that period.
Then came the war with his grief and unrelenting pain in his inconsolable.
Then there will be war with the grief that goes back and the inevitable suffering of many families.
At the end of the war views have not changed. It will be just the tough love between Lily and Frank to succeed, even if temporarily, to build a bridge between the two sides of the road. A new life will be celebrated, a new life born from the union and the division of two religions respect each other as always should be. Arthur and Lily do, the stronger their love, aware of the error committed by their fathers and tenacious in wanting to show everyone that a new life is possible and it is the right one
It 's a simple book, with sliding and moving when you enter the world of the author, in everyday life difficult, but not desperate about his family.
Mom is a key figure. She and her sister Lily are women around which much of the story, has great affection for them, with others on the relationship is much more detached, more negative father figure who can not give love to their children or nor his wife and all of which have a great awe. Harry
us to live in his neighborhood, he tells us what happens in the houses around her: the secrets, lies, gossip, i litigi, descrivendo molti personaggi diversissimi tra loro.
Un mondo vivo anche se non sempre sereno, destinato a scomparire, ma non nel ricordo dell’autore che, emigrato in America, ci farà ritorno a cinquant’anni:
“
sapevo che non avrei più visto quella strada, con le sue miserabili case a schiera che si fronteggiano attraverso l’acciottolato. Presto le ruspe avrebbero fatto il loro lavoro e, forse, avrebbero abbattuto anche quel che restava del muro invisibile. Quando Ruby e io eravamo entrati nella casa di Annie, quel giorno, era stata una delle rare volte, nella storia della nostra strada, che qualcuno andava in casa di qualcuno dalla parte opposta. I thought a long time, until the night he died and the first thin light filtered into the room. But the room was still there, alive in memory and I heard the sounds that I used to hear at dawn, when I was a kid and I was lying in bed in the room on the first floor of our house ... "The book was written by Harry Bernstein's wife when she died and was published when he was 96 years. Always be followed by two other autobiographical books: The Dream
infinite The garden and sea bream. 
