Appelfeld writes simply but gorgeously about important things, and the translation is particularly graceful and supple.
A quiet, moving and utterly convincing story about the growing love between an aging author and his companion.
Seventy when the novel opens, Ernst is a retired investment adviser who has been married twice. His first wife and their baby daughter were killed by the Nazis, and his second marriage was a mistake whose pain still torments him. At first abrupt, if not downright curmudgeonly, Ernst goes to a cafe in his Jerusalem neighborhood every morning and then spends hours writing. He’s not in robust health, so he hires Irena as a companion to supervise his care. Irena is 36 and has a simple faith far different from the angst that has bedeviled Ernst. As a boy, he rejected Judaism, much to the distress of his father, and joined the Communist Party. Eventually he became a member of the Red Army, a time that he still recalls with fondness due to its clarity: "You know who’s a friend and who’s a foe." Over time, however, he rejected communism and rediscovered the faith of his ancestors. In fact, much of the writing that now preoccupies him involves reminiscences of his devout grandfather in the Carpathian Mountains in Czernowitz (now in Ukraine and, perhaps not so coincidentally, where Appelfeld was born). Although he initially instructs Irena to destroy his manuscripts after his death because he doesn't "want strangers to grope [his] writings," over time he begins to read her excerpts, and she finds in his work a remarkable sensibility, both tender and kind. As Ernst’s health continues to deteriorate, his need to record his memories grows more desperate, and he begins to rely ever more on Irena as an empathetic listener, eventually finding in her presence "the gateway to life."
Appelfeld writes simply but gorgeously about important things, and the translation is particularly graceful and supple.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8052-4295-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Schocken
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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