This serious effort to evoke the crucible of German fascism proves less effective at conveying emotional resonance.
The perspectives of perpetrators, victim, and bystanders evoke the horrors of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Noted New Zealand author Chidgey’s latest is a lengthy, well-researched addition to the already sizable shelf of Holocaust fiction. Dr. Lenard Weber is a Mischling, only part Jewish, but he ends up at Buchenwald, having been summoned there by Sturmbannführer Dietrich Hahn. Hahn’s role at the camp is administrative officer—overseeing budgets, plumbing, etc. The inmates are less than human to him but not so his wife, Greta, with whom he lives in a luxury villa. When Greta develops ovarian cancer, Dietrich will try any medical resource, which leads him to Weber, inventor of the Sympathetic Vitaliser, a machine designed to destroy cancerous tumors. Weber narrates his story in 1946, via letters written to his daughter, who's in the Theresienstadt ghetto; Dietrich’s account dates from the 1950s; Greta's "imaginary diary" takes her from 1943 to 1945; and a fourth narrative voice emanates from 1,000 citizens of Weimar, whose awareness of the vast camp nearby is filtered through propaganda, self-interest, and delusion. Packed with precise details about the camp, German culture, the Nazi machine, and much more, the novel offers a sober reflection on a country seized by dehumanizing insanity, corrupted by lies and cruelty. Yet the characterization is predictable, especially when it comes to Dietrich, a familiar blend of Aryan orderliness, contempt, and deception. Greta senses the abyss on her doorstep but averts her eyes. Weber is a sympathetic lens through which the worst of the suffering may be glimpsed. And the Weimar citizens embody denial, disgust, and disbelief. As the war wraps up, deliverance for one survivor contrasts with guiltless acceptance by the German community.
This serious effort to evoke the crucible of German fascism proves less effective at conveying emotional resonance.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-60945-627-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.
A love triangle among young literati has a long and complicated aftermath.
King’s narrator doesn’t reveal her name until the very last page, but Sam and Yash, the brainy stars of her 17th-century literature class, call her Jordan. Actually, at first they refer to her as Daisy, for Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby, but when they learn she came to their unnamed college on a golf scholarship, they change it to Jordan for Gatsby’s golfer friend. The boys are housesitting for a professor who’s spending a year at Oxford, living in a cozy, book-filled Victorian Jordan visits for the first time after watching The Deer Hunter at the student union on her first date with Sam. As their relationship proceeds, Jordan is practically living at the house herself, trying hard not to notice that she’s actually in love with Yash. A Baptist, Sam has an everything-but policy about sex that only increases the tension. The title of the book refers to a nickname for the king of hearts from an obscure card game the three of them play called Sir Hincomb Funnibuster, and both the game and variations on the moniker recur as the novel spins through and past Jordan’s senior year, then decades into the future. King is a genius at writing love stories—including Euphoria (2014), which won the Kirkus Prize—and her mostly sunny version of the campus novel is an enjoyable alternative to the current vogue for dark academia. Tragedies are on the way, though, as we know they must be, since nothing gold can stay and these darn fictional characters seem to make the same kinds of stupid mistakes that real people do. Tenderhearted readers will soak the pages of the last chapter with tears.
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780802165176
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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