THE DARK ROOM

Name: THE DARK ROOM
Author: Rachel Seiffert
ISBN: 0-375-42104-1

by Rachel Seiffert ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 2001

From the brookwater prose and hovering sentence fragments of “Helmut” to the rich unfolding of the second and third stories,...

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Dazzling debut by a gifted British-born author now living in Germany.

This three-part work's opening story, “Helmut,” begins in a Berlin photographer’s darkroom but then expands to take in the whole Third Reich and ghosts still lingering there. Photos taken by Helmut, a slow-witted photographer’s assistant, bring Berlin into focus in shades of gray, as if on film developing in chemicals. Helmut collects a street history of Berlin during the ’30s and under Allied bombing but has little feeling about what he’s doing and even thinks victory is at hand as Berlin falls. In the second tale, “Lore,” the eponymous teenage protagonist becomes head of the family when her parents are thrown into Allied internment camps after Germany surrenders. She must herd her four siblings many hundreds of miles across Bavaria to her grandmother’s house in Hamburg, all the while pushing a baby carriage full of belongings, bedding, and crockery through a countryside awash with starvation and wandering skeleton people just released from concentration camps. “Lore” excels as a small-scale model of epic storytelling. “Micha,” set in the late 1990s, strikes even more deeply. Young Micha, a teacher, finds himself bedeviled by second-hand guilt about what may have been his grandfather’s bloody misdeeds as a Waffen-SS soldier in Belarussia, where the Nazis murdered all Communists and Jews. After the war, the Soviets interned Granddad for nine years—but for what crimes? Micha's entire family and his pregnant girlfriend plead with him to abandon his obsession (they revere the patriarch as a charming artist), but he hurtles into his forebear’s perhaps horrid past with long hours of research into the files of Nazi criminals and many trips to a village in Belarussia where his grandfather may dutifully have killed hundreds.

From the brookwater prose and hovering sentence fragments of “Helmut” to the rich unfolding of the second and third stories, Seiffert’s style and sensibility are superb throughout.

Pub Date: May 11, 2001

ISBN: 0-375-42104-1

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES

by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

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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

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.