A beautiful but challengingly complex tale of the ramifications of history.
In this dramatic novel haunted by the Holocaust, a man stumbles upon an old collection of letters that raise provocative questions about his grandfather’s death.
Seattle engineer Avi Arutiyan’s uncle Sarkis dies and leaves him his house in Hermosa Beach, California—a small, dilapidated structure that originally belonged to Avi’s grandfather, Aram. There, Avi discovers a valise filled with correspondence addressed to Aram from David Levy, a survivor of the Holocaust who was imprisoned at Auschwitz. Aram was apparently murdered in Germany in 1965, during a burglary, but the case was never officially solved. Levy cryptically refers to acquiring “military supplies,” but it’s unclear for what purpose. Avi decides to investigate, hungry to understand his hidden family history. He pleads for answers from his mother: “This family’s been full of secrets,” Avi says. “I don’t know who my grandfather was, or my father, or my uncle, or even my brother. They are all gone, and I don’t have anyone to ask but you.” Bell (The Metronome, 2014) artfully weaves an intricate plot that’s so labyrinthine it flirts with convolution, showing one family’s connections to both the Holocaust and the 1915 Armenian genocide. The text jumps back and forth in time from Avi’s contemporary investigation to the early 1960s, when Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s war crimes trial stirred painful memories for many people, including Aram and David. Bell tells the story kaleidoscopically, shifting the narrative from one character’s perspective to another, creating a kind of literary panopticon. Avi’s background is Armenian and Jewish, but he doesn’t feel particularly connected to either identity, and Bell poignantly depicts the character’s alienation as he learns more about his family’s past; later, for example, it’s revealed that Avi’s half brother, Armenian freedom fighter Tigran, apparently died while wiring a bomb. Throughout, Bell masterfully combines his mystery story with an unflinching look at the 20th century’s bleakest tragedies.
A beautiful but challengingly complex tale of the ramifications of history.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72662-689-7
Page Count: 452
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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