A somber and important novel highlighting the experiences of German Jewish women during the Holocaust.
A missing piece of family history is memorialized in Suchman’s historical novel, a tribute to the lives lost during the Holocaust.
The book opens with a nonfiction prologue: In 2018, the author and her husband, Bruce, missed their connecting flight through Frankfurt to Washington, D.C. With 12 hours to kill, they explored the city. Bruce’s father, Curtis, fled the region at 17 to escape the Nazis; the couple found a plaque (a stolpersteine, known in English as a stumbling stone) dedicated to Emma and Selma Heppenheimer, Bruce’s great-grandmother and great-aunt. But missing from the stone was the name of another great aunt: Alice. It is here that Suchman moves into the novel proper, using her extensive research into Alice’s life to fictionalize her story. Beginning in 1920 and ending during World War II, Suchman’s narrative covers more than two decades as she imagines how this Jewish woman endured her experiences as Nazi ideology and politics took hold of Germany and controlled and suppressed so many aspects of her life. Readers first meet Alice in Nuremberg on the eve of her wedding to Ludwig Adler. A graduate of the Nuremberg Arts and Crafts School with dreams of opening her own fashion studio, Alice begins an apprenticeship in a handbag factory, and it is here that her first true experiences with antisemitism begin. Suchman writes of Alice’s experiences in a powerful way; readers see a young woman come of age and find her place in the world, unable to find firm footing because of the events taking place around her. Short, emphatic statements, such as Alice’s reaction to discovering the identity of a co-worker leaving derogatory notes for her (“surely, he couldn’t hate her if he actually knew her”), emphasize the horrific dehumanization of ordinary people just for being Jewish. Extremely readable with close attention paid to both wider historical and intimate family details, Suchman’s tale serves as a monument in words.
A somber and important novel highlighting the experiences of German Jewish women during the Holocaust.Pub Date: May 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781685134105
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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