Katerina here is a Ruthenian peasant woman who, before the Holocaust, worked for Jewish families—families whom she feared, was fascinated by, stole from, and ultimately identified with so oddly that their memories will very much determine the course of her largely cursed life. She is mystified by the probity and the gentleness of the Jews, horrified by their elastic struggle with their own faith and their way with commerce; she drinks and she steals from them almost unconsciously, yet they develop into paradigms in her mind—especially of suffering: The family she first is employed by is destroyed in a Polish pogrom. Katerina eventually insists an illegitimate son born to her be circumcised and speak Yiddish. When the boy is killed by a drunken suitor, she stabs the man and is sent to prison—where, at a distance, she learns of the Jews' ever more methodical destruction. When they are all gone from Poland, she is released. Appelfeld (The Healer, 1990; For Every Sin, 1989; etc.) in keeping Katerina in prison for so much of the book's second half, sacrifices the freshness of incident for an artificially concentrated meditation on anti-Semitism. But Katerina in the actual company of Jews makes for remarkable fiction. Jewish ambivalence and self-loathing contrast with her equally inchoate unease; and one brilliant scene, the burial of one of her employers, a cultivated Jewish pianist—money and grief and argument melded in a phantasm of Jewish essence—is an astounding achievement, among the best pages Appelfeld has ever written. Structurally flawed, but very intense, disturbing.
Pub Date: July 6, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-40610-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As she seeks to repair bridges, Cat awakens anger and treachery in the hearts of those she once betrayed. Making amends,...
Before sobriety, Catherine "Cat" Coombs had it all: fun friends, an exciting job, and a love affair with alcohol. Until she blacked out one more time and woke up in a stranger’s bed.
By that time, “having it all” had already devolved into hiding the extent of her drinking from everyone she cared about, including herself. Luckily for Cat, the stranger turned out to be Jason Halliwell, a rather delicious television director marking three years, eight months, and 69 days of sobriety. Inspired by Jason—or rather, inspired by the prospect of a romantic relationship with this handsome hunk—Cat joins him at AA meetings and embarks on her own journey toward clarity. But sobriety won’t work until Cat commits to it for herself. Their relationship is tumultuous, as Cat falls off the wagon time and again. Along the way, Cat discovers that the cold man she grew up endlessly failing to please was not her real father, and with his death, her mother’s secret escapes. So she heads for Nantucket, where she meets her drunken dad and two half sisters—one boisterously welcoming and the other sulkily suspicious—and where she commits an unforgivable blunder. Years later, despairing of her persistent relapses, Jason has left Cat, taking their daughter with him. Finally, painfully, Cat gets clean. Green (Saving Grace, 2014, etc.) handles grim issues with a sure hand, balancing light romance with tense family drama. She unflinchingly documents Cat’s humiliations under the influence and then traces her commitment to sobriety. Simultaneously masking the motivations of those surrounding our heroine, Green sets up a surprising karmic lesson.
As she seeks to repair bridges, Cat awakens anger and treachery in the hearts of those she once betrayed. Making amends, like addiction, may endanger her future.Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-04734-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
This is the sort of book that stirs one so deeply that it is almost impossible to attempt to convey the impression it leaves. It is the story of today's Exodus, of America's great trek, as the hordes of dispossessed tenant farmers from the dust bowl turn their hopes to the promised land of California's fertile valleys. The story of one family, with the "hangers-on" that the great heart of extreme poverty sometimes collects, but in that story is symbolized the saga of a movement in which society is before the bar. What an indictment of a system — what an indictment of want and poverty in the land of plenty! There is flash after flash of unforgettable pictures, sharply etched with that restraint and power of pen that singles Steinbeck out from all his contemporaries. There is anger here, but it is a deep and disciplined passion, of a man who speaks out of the mind and heart of his knowledge of a people. One feels in reading that so they must think and feel and speak and live. It is an unresolved picture, a record of history still in the making. Not a book for casual reading. Not a book for unregenerate conservative. But a book for everyone whose social conscience is astir — or who is willing to face facts about a segment of American life which is and which must be recognized. Steinbeck is coming into his own. A new and full length novel from his pen is news. Publishers backing with advertising, promotion aids, posters, etc. Sure to be one of the big books of the Spring. First edition limited to half of advance as of March 1st. One half of dealer's orders to be filled with firsts.
Pub Date: April 14, 1939
ISBN: 0143039431
Page Count: 532
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1939
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