by Stephen Ostrow ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 7, 2015
A charming, funny piece of Americana.
In his debut comedy, Ostrow takes readers on a meandering, satirical journey through the justice system, American-Jewish culture, and the perplexing life of a small-time magician.
This tongue-in-cheek story follows Irving Flax, a magician who hasn’t made it big. Magic is Irving’s lifelong passion—he mixes performance with owning and operating a small magic shop in upstate New York—but he can’t avoid the trouble it gets him into, from domestic drama to ill-advised professional entanglements to more serious dangers. Irving’s life is a series of misadventures, but they come to a head when he foils a convenience store robbery with a flashy fire trick. While briefly lauded for his heroism, Irving finds himself brought up on charges for carrying a concealed weapon, assault with a deadly weapon, maybe even attempted murder. And that’s just the beginning. The novel moves quickly and unpredictably, bouncing between Irving’s central, present-day challenges and scenes from his past and family history. The story even makes time to tell life stories of seemingly unrelated characters, all to set up the punch line of how they intersect with Irving’s strange, small world. Replete with comic asides and a rich cast of curious characters, the book reads more like a Woody Allen film than the average novel. Parts of the story feel dated, with a number of tricks and jokes relying on Polaroid cameras, slide projectors, or other outmoded artifacts. The plot also calls for a strong suspension of disbelief, considering how many frauds and scam artists could be exposed through the use of, say, a Google search. But these anachronisms usually aid the absurdist exaggerations and humor; as the book itself says when describing a record player: “It is an obsolete technology but, perhaps, it’s a bit more romantic.” Some of the humor may also fall flat for readers more concerned with political correctness, as it does invoke stereotypes and other broad-comedy tropes. Nevertheless, it’s all in good fun, and fans of older stand-up routines will feel right at home.
A charming, funny piece of Americana.Pub Date: June 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4917-6923-2
Page Count: 344
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017
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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
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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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