bookshelf

THE CONVERSION

Name: THE CONVERSION
Author: Aharon Appelfeld
ISBN: 0-8052-4153-1

by Aharon Appelfeld ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 3, 1998

bookshelf

First published in 1991, this provocative parable is the 12th novel to reach English from the internationally acclaimed author of such fiction as Badenheim 1939 (1980) and (most recently) The Iron Tracks (1998). Protagonist Karl HÅbner is an Austrian Jew who has, with his mother’s blessing, converted to Christianity in order to facilitate his advancement as a municipal official employed by the city of Neufeld. No sooner has Karl accepted congratulations at his “conversion ceremony,” though, than nagging reminders of his late parents and of his religious heritage begin to shake his resolve to settle smoothly into his chosen new life. His oldest friend, an earlier convert, exemplifies embittered unfulfillment. His “scandalous” Aunt Franzi, a former cabaret singer and actress—and a forthright “proud Jew and . . . woman of principle”—dies suddenly, a visit to her provincial hometown tellingly evoking Karl’s untroubled childhood. And, crucially, his memories of Gloria, the housemaid who nursed his parents during the last illness of each, compel him to seek her out. His reunion with Gloria, and his chastened gratitude for her devotion to his loved ones (“She had absorbed their lives fully while he was merely a drifter in their world”), unite the two and show Karl a pathway back to his origins when an injustice orchestrated by the government he serves (the abolition of his city’s Jewish market area) forces him to abandon the position he had coveted and won. He and Gloria return to the Ruthenian mountains to live simply, but they can—t escape the fate to which Karl had believed himself immune. Their story’s conclusion is swift, impersonal, and devastating. The weakness of The Conversion is its tendency toward dogmatic allegory (at times we suspect Appelfeld is jury-rigging a thinly fictionalized argument against assimilation into other cultures as opposed to accepting one’s native ethnicity). But its signal strength—his complex portrayal of a divided soul frustrated in its pursuit of goodness—once again confirms Appelfeld’s position as matchless dramatist of the intermingled burdens and rewards of Jewry in extremis.

Pub Date: Nov. 3, 1998

ISBN: 0-8052-4153-1

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Schocken

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
POLAND, A GREEN LAND
by Aharon Appelfeld ; translated by Stuart Schoffman

- BOOK REVIEW
TO THE EDGE OF SORROW
by Aharon Appelfeld ; translated by Stuart Schoffman

- BOOK REVIEW
THE MAN WHO NEVER STOPPED SLEEPING
by Aharon Appelfeld ; translated by Jeffrey M. Green

bookshelf

CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

bookshelf

Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).

All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."

Pub Date: April 8, 1974

ISBN: 0385086954

Page Count: 216

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE
by Stephen King & Peter Straub

- BOOK REVIEW
NEVER FLINCH
by Stephen King

- BOOK REVIEW
YOU LIKE IT DARKER
by Stephen King

- PERSPECTIVES
Appreciations: Carrie Turns 40

- SEEN & HEARD
Stephen King Used ‘Carrie’ Advance To Support Mom

- BOOK TO SCREEN
New ‘Carrie’ Series in the Works at Amazon

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.