This is a long story, the whole history of Texas, from its very beginnings, as far back as 1540 when the Spanish nobleman Francisco Vasquez de Coronado led an expedition from Mexico to search the northern wilds for gold. And while much of the story is interesting, some of it is quite boring. Nevertheless, the story will go on. And on. Never before has Michener been so bold about using his muted blend of fiction/fact to instruct. We are presented from the outset with a (fictional) state Task Force, assigned to determine how best the complex, colorful weave of Texas history can be presented to its schoolchildren of today. As we meet the members of the Task Force, it quickly becomes apparent that each represents a Texas stereotype: e.g., the oilman, the rancher, the Southern lady, the Spanish descendant. And, indeed, as Michener repeatedly interrupts the musings of the Task Force to present fictionalized vignettes from different epochs of Texas history, we meet each member's ancestors as they stumble into, and flourish within, the confines of the Lone Star State's borders. For example, the 21 st-removed ancestor of Task Force member Efrain Garza accompanies the Spanish as a muleteer on that early expedition. Another Garza is at the side of the Mexican Generalissimo Santa Anna as he lays siege to the Alamo. We follow the sweep of Texas history through the years of early settlement, the founding of the Republic, the taming of the Wild West, the great Indian wars, the Civil War, the establishment of the cotton, cattle and oil industries. We live the beginnings of the Texas Rangers, even thrill to the revolutionary introduction of barbed wire to ranch life, and delight in the contemporary vagaries of the real-estate boom, that last frontier in which a man can still make his millions if he has the courage of his speculations. Such real-life heroes as Jim Bowie and Sam Houston are tossed into the mix with their fictional counterparts, and credibility is often strained with the run of coincidences (in a state as large as Texas, how is it that the ancestors of Task Force members manage to stumble over each other at every historical turn?). But the generational connections do serve to keep the story moving. While some will be offended by Michener's politics—he takes care to warn, for instance, that the surge of illegal immigration from Mexico could one day overcome the state—most will find he has reduced the sprawl of Texas history to a good read. Overall, Michener tames Texas, and if in doing so he flattens some of its flair, he presents its history as a comprehensive and readable whole.
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1985
ISBN: 0375761411
Page Count: 1120
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1985
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
BOOK REVIEW
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