THER PEOPLE'S HOUSES

by Lors Segal ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 7, 1964

This gifted and quietly incisive review of a young life and the natural obulliency and earnest dignity of a child caught in the terror, misery and isolation caused by Hitler's Germany, is uniquely of our time, yet touches upon some ancient impulses and directions in the human condition. The child's perceptions remain intact as the author reviews her childhood in Vienna with her aloof father, her anxious mother, cavalier Uncle Raul and other relatives, as a Jewish family, bewildered, angry and frightened. Manifestations of Hitler's order -- sings paintd on shops, propertysmashed, Hitler Youth Rallies -- are merely puzzling to Lorle, and often exciting. Even separation from her parents to be sent to england brings the excitement of a railway voyage, classroom likes and dislikes, although her mother's parting gift, a sausage, somehow cannot be thrown away even in its rotting state. living in a series of British homes, even after her parents come to England, the little girl struggles to fit in, to demand a binding response from the various well meaning, alien ladies who offer ""Homes."" Growth brings a new understanding of her parents as she witnesses her father's decline and death in england. In a sense there is a happy ending with the family reunited in the dust and heat of the Dominican Republic, and later in New York, but home is in the past for the older ones, and Lorle walks ""ginerly"" in an ""island of comforts knowing it is surrounded...by calamity."" Most has been published in The New Yorker. Special in quality and taste.

Pub Date: Oct. 7, 1964

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1964

Categories: NONFICTION