A simple yet charming tale that captures the hopes and challenges of the immigrant experience for Jewish women.
In this debut historical fiction, young teen Fanny Tatch escapes from her shtetl near Kiev to embark on a new life in America.
Rolling out strudels, 13-year-old Fanny Tatch feels like her life is rolling away, too. She’d like to receive an education like her brother, but she instead awaits another fate as a Jewish girl living in the Ukraine in the 1890s. Her father plans an arranged marriage for her, and worst of all, her mother is very ill. While visiting her dying sister, Fanny’s aunt Freda ignites her niece’s imagination with news that she and Freda’s much older husband, Avram, plan to immigrate soon to America. After Mama dies, Papa marries Ida, who schemes for Fanny to marry her oafish nephew. Then Avram dies, and Freda suggests that Fanny travel to America with her in his place. They quietly make their way out of the country, sliding past questioning Cossacks and arriving by ship in Manhattan, where Avram’s cousin Sophie and husband, Mendel, charge them room and board to stay in the couple’s Lower East Side apartment. Sophie also gets them jobs with her in the garment industry but becomes enraged when overseer Mike takes a shine to Freda and allows Fanny to work part time so she can attend school. Mendel also rather strangely withholds letters from Papa. These tensions ultimately drive Fanny and Freda out onto the streets, but it’s a blessing in disguise, as Fanny finds the keys to truly start their new lives. Constain, a retired teacher and school librarian, has drawn inspiration from her grandmother, also named Fanny Tatch, to develop this work of historical fiction. There’s a vibrant veracity throughout her smooth-flowing narrative, with Constain effectively conveying Jewish cultural details as well as Fanny’s wonder and engagement in learning. The story at times lacks nuance, though, with some rather one-dimensional villains and Cinderella-like turns of fortune. Overall, however, Constain has crafted a lovely coming-of-age novel that pays homage to her family history.
A simple yet charming tale that captures the hopes and challenges of the immigrant experience for Jewish women.Pub Date: March 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494928780
Page Count: 198
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
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.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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