CLARA MONDSCHEIN’S MELANCHOLIA

Name: CLARA MONDSCHEIN’S MELANCHOLIA
Author: Anne Raeff
ISBN: 1-931561-16-8

by Anne Raeff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 9, 2002

A family portrait of considerable eloquence and intelligence, rendered somewhat uneven by Ruth’s portion being the most...

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A tragic past and a difficult present converge quietly and compassionately in Raeff’s debut, a tale of three generations of women in a family still coming to terms with the Holocaust.

In 1996, the oldest generation, in the figure of 86-year-old Ruth, is still unbowed. After the death of her physician husband Karl the year before, Ruth, a former nurse, has begun volunteering daily at an AIDS hospice in Greenwich Village as a way to keep herself active. The youngest generation, represented by teenaged granddaughter Deborah, is still facing the questions of youth: how to deal with friends, family, and the future. But she is a talented cellist, and playing her music gives her a refuge from the current family crisis. For it is the middle generation, Deborah’s mother and Ruth’s daughter, the depressed and bedridden Clara, who seems most oppressed by the family’s past. Ruth finds an outlet for her frustration with Clara by telling her life story to Tommy, an embittered hospice patient dying without having told his family. She speaks of her own childhood in Vienna, of her father’s terminal melancholia, of her father’s doctor becoming her husband (even though he was gay), of their flight from the Nazis and eventual capture late in the war, and of life in the concentration camp, which culminated in the birth of Clara days before they were liberated. Tommy doesn’t live to hear the whole story. Deborah, meanwhile, somewhat uncertain about her own sexuality, runs away from the stench of Clara’s sickness, which pervades their house in New Jersey, and finds herself knocking on Ruth’s door in the city. When no one answers, she goes in through the window to wait, and when Ruth comes home from her last vigil with Tommy, they go together to see what can be done about poor Clara.

A family portrait of considerable eloquence and intelligence, rendered somewhat uneven by Ruth’s portion being the most compelling by far.

Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2002

ISBN: 1-931561-16-8

Page Count: 258

Publisher: MacAdam/Cage

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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by Anne Raeff

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

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THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

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by Kristin Hannah

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.