A brilliant portrayal of the sufferings of Hungarian Jews during WW II, seen through the raucous and often comic prism of a small boy's stubbornly independent spirit. Jozsef Sondor, six years old in 1938, is living in the rural village of Oszu with his grandfather. Jozsef is separated from his mother and older brother who struggle to survive in Budapest, the family having been abandoned by their father, a successful playwright who will communicate only sporadically with his wife and children throughout the coming war years. Young Jozsef, refreshingly unlike the conventional sensitive protagonist of novels of this kind, is a rude hell-raiser who's often hilariously disrespectful to his elders and instructors. When the danger of invasion forces Jozsef to rejoin his mother and brother, he's ripped away from the comparative calm of village life and thrust into a maelstrom of psychic and moral disturbance that changes him radically as his understanding of what the group will face together increases. Nyiri, who's written one previous novel (Steps, published in 1979 in England), surrounds his young protagonist with dozens of vividly drawn, importantly involved secondary characters and patiently, movingly shows how ritual mistreatment of Jews, exacerbated by the war's unfolding horrors, initially affects Jozsef's childish pastimes (his ``playgrounds''), then slowly assumes fuller form in his consciousness and shapes his embattled growth. This wonderfully detailed novel observes the experience of the Holocaust in numerous fresh, pleasingly oblique ways (e.g., an old woman's plaintive question, ``How will they treat cats that have belonged to Jews?''). A novel with the feel of one that's been thought about and worked on for much of a lifetime. It's a wonder not to be missed.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-10918-4
Page Count: 536
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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