by Diana Altman ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 11, 2019
While this narrative remains light on action, the author speaks with sophistication and style about the experiences of...
A woman born to an affluent New York family reflects on her upbringing and evolving perceptions of her parents.
Altman’s (In Theda Bara’s Tent, 2010, etc.) latest novel begins with an ominous proclamation: “While cleaning out my mother’s files after she died alone at her secluded house behind a locked gate near the Catskill Mountains, her five cats yowling from fear and hunger, I came upon an alarming letter.” From this document, Sonya Adler learns that many years ago, her mother, Violet, gave up a son for adoption. This discovery causes Sonya to recount her life story, beginning with the moment when she was told her parents would be divorcing. Her mother is the beautiful daughter of a wealthy industrialist; her father is an acclaimed movie producer 20 years her senior. After their separation, the shame of her mother’s unmarried status haunts Sonya’s childhood and shapes her view of relationships into adulthood. Altman’s writing is thoughtful and articulate. Though Sonya’s story includes many formative experiences, such as moving to a new neighborhood, mourning her relatives’ deaths, and falling in love with her eventual husband, the focus repeatedly returns to her mother. Violet is shown to be a complex, at times contradictory person. It is up to readers to decide whether she is petulant or passionate; an irresponsible mother or a woman trying to escape the expectations of a 1950s housewife. Sonya narrates her views on feminist issues and social mores quite earnestly. Many of her anecdotes are compelling and historically revealing, such as her fight to keep her maiden surname when casting a vote. She is admirably cognizant of her own flaws: She admits to being sheltered, changing for people who make her unhappy, and feeling jealous of her sister. But despite its many strengths, the plot is often lacking in conflict. Sonya describes her personal dramas quietly and solemnly, and few are sustained for very long. As a result, the flavor of the story is slightly bland.
While this narrative remains light on action, the author speaks with sophistication and style about the experiences of American women in the recent past.Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63152-543-8
Page Count: 305
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Diana Altman
BOOK REVIEW
by Diana Altman
by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
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An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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