Brilliant.
An acclaimed German author explores the lighter side of the Enlightenment in his first English translation.
Carl Friedrich Gauss, “the Prince of Mathematics,” was born in Germany in 1777. A fiendishly prolific mind, he transformed the fields of geometry, astronomy and physics, and his magisterial Disquisitiones Arithmeticae—completed when he was all of 24—remains an important work. Born in Prussia in 1769, Alexander von Humboldt became the first naturalist to submit the plants, animals and terrain of Central and South America to sustained scientific scrutiny. He would become one of the most famous men in Europe, hailed as a “second Columbus.” Here, in his sixth book, the prolific author (b. 1975) turns these illustrious figures into two of the most distinctive and engaging characters in recent fiction. Gauss begins life as a child prodigy, a little genius who can’t understand why everyone else thinks so slowly, and he only grows more impatient with age. As an adult, Gauss is confounded not just by the idiocy of his fellows, but by the whole benighted world to which he is confined. Gauss is slightly troubled by the realization that space is curved, but he’s really aggravated by the knowledge that he’s stuck with the horse-drawn coach while, one day, machines will make travel fast and comfortable. If Gauss is somewhat superhuman, Humboldt is almost otherworldly. Educated according to a system devised by Goethe, Humboldt is raised to be a scientist. Eschewing the messier aspects of life, he prefers quantifying and categorizing. Travels in the New World, which might, for another man, be an opportunity for adventure, are for Humboldt a chance to measure the altitude of mountains, catalogue the plants that grow in volcanoes and count the lice on the heads of native women. When these two meet, in 1828, each finds the other exasperating, but the two old luminaries end up being something like soul mates. Steeped in German classicism and set against the topsy-turvy politics of the Napoleonic wars, this is a wonderfully entertaining depiction of an era, but, more importantly, a warm, playful portrait of two delightfully improbable men.
Brilliant.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2006
ISBN: 0-375-42446-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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