A metaphysical thriller by the author of, among others, Telling Time (1995), this one about the human need for gurus both religious and secular. The events here, described from multiple points of view, are set into motion when Harry Field, an elderly professor looking after his baby granddaughter, allows Oliver, the child's absentee father, to take her to the park. Only too late do Harry and his daughter Judy realize that the child has fallen into the hands of the cult to which Oliver belongs—a group led by Miller, a man who claims to be God. Animated by distrust of Judy and a wish for power, Oliver is a cut-rate Raskolnikov who's inspired the fanatical loyalty of a lonely retarded man, Nick Foster. Oliver and the baby end up at the rural New Hampshire commune of Miller's ragtag followers. Davey Leo, a peaceable academic who hopes to win Judy's love by proving himself a hero, follows them there. But after Davey manages to reunite Judy with her daughter, other bizarre developments unfold: Oliver concocts a scheme to kill Davey that ultimately backfires; Loomer, Miller's possible successor, brings Davey to a secluded island for a strange mock trial; happily married Harry finds himself courted by his nostalgic old lover Lena; and Miller Farm, armed for what its population believes to be an impending Armageddon, edges toward confrontation with the local townspeople. Throughout, Wright highlights his characters' need for mentors and guides—from Nick's idolization of Oliver to Davey's awe of his colleague Harry—as well as their latent capacity for violence. Still, despite many moments of genuine emotion—the encounters between Harry and Lena, the appearances of the surprisingly sympathetic Miller—the characters in general are wooden embodiments of ideas who fail to lend plausibility to a disjointed plot.
Pub Date: May 20, 1997
ISBN: 1-880909-55-3
Page Count: 302
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1997
Blurring the edges between history and fiction, this achingly mournful work impresses with its grave empathy.
A celebrated Israeli novelist’s visit to Amsterdam, the city where he was born, triggers the search for his origins that—unknowingly—he has been waiting to make his entire life.
Paying thoughtful homage to the Jews of Amsterdam, trapped in the Nazis' inexorable vise of persecution, Israeli writer Elon (If You Awaken Love, 2007, etc.) has composed a story of love, loss, and yearning, expressed through the creation of a novel within a novel. Her central character, writer Yoel Blum, was instructed by his mother never to visit the city from which she, Yoel, and his sister fled, but after her death he makes the trip and accidentally sees a clip of prewar film that opens up questions of identity he feels compelled to explore. So Yoel settles in Amsterdam, in a tacky hotel right near the hospital where he was born, and begins to accumulate notes for a novel through which he will try to make sense of the past. This second story features Sonia, a mother, and her two children, Nettie and Leo, characters who both animate Yoel’s knowledge of the past and accompany him into the present as he wanders the streets, accumulating information, acquaintances, and atmosphere, while slowly coming to terms with the truth. Heavily shadowed with the creeping horrors of the Holocaust—in particular the heart-wrenching choice to hide children and the consequences of that choice—the novel is given weight by its focus on Yoel’s psychology and the mood of a beautiful capital flowing with symbolic dark water. Lyrically phrased and often powerfully visual, the novel has a slow pace, unlike other, perhaps more conventional war stories. However, this deeply felt tale offers a rewarding meditation on survival and on digesting the emotional burdens freely or unknowingly carried.
Blurring the edges between history and fiction, this achingly mournful work impresses with its grave empathy.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3022-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Vivid prose isn’t enough to lift this book from its own excruciating depths.
An avid young Hitler supporter discovers that his parents have been hiding a Jewish girl in their house.
Johannes Betzler is a child in Vienna when Hitler comes to power and Austria votes for annexation. In school, he learns that “our race, the purest, didn’t have enough land” but that “the Führer had trust in us, the children; we were his future.” Johannes joins the Jungvolk and, once he’s old enough, the Hitler Youth. At home, meanwhile, his parents grow more and more discomfited; they’re quietly opposed to the Nazi party but well aware of the danger they’d be in if they voiced their opposition—even to their own son. Then, as a teenager, Johannes is maimed by a bomb, losing a hand and part of his cheekbone. Wounded, he returns home, where for months he is bedridden, alone in the house with his mother and grandmother. Increasingly, his father is—mysteriously—gone. His mother seems to be acting oddly and, finally, Johannes discovers the reason why: There is a girl, a Jewish girl, hidden upstairs in a secret partition. This is where Leunens’ (Primordial Soup, 2002) novel takes off. Johannes becomes increasingly fixated upon Elsa. At first, her existence prompts him to question his devotion to Hitler—is he betraying the Führer by not reporting his parents?—but as time goes on, and as Johannes’ preoccupation with Elsa grows more sexual, these doubts fade. Leunens is a strong writer, her prose supple and darkly engaging. Her depiction of wartime Vienna is nearly cinematic and utterly convincing. But it isn’t clear if Johannes is meant to be a sympathetic character, and as the novel goes on, and his choices grow more and more disturbing, it becomes harder to sympathize with him. Nor does he change, exactly, over the course of the book, although his circumstances certainly do. Ultimately, it’s unclear what Leunens’ larger purpose is. This is a dark, disturbing novel—but to what end?
Vivid prose isn’t enough to lift this book from its own excruciating depths.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3908-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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