A set of mesmerizing stories that wraps up way too soon.
This remarkable debut collects a trio of horror tales starring Jewish characters.
Friedl Bamberger, in this book’s title story, lives a comfortable life in Germany before World War II. She revels in the wealth from her father’s successful department store and is perhaps a bit snooty. Her apartment building’s new porter, Henrik, catches her eye, and she’s ecstatic about the possibility of a new romance. However, Henrik’s arrival coincides with unforeseen changes as tenants start to disappear. “The Rebbe’s Prayer is Answered” follows a seemingly disenchanted rebbe in Poland whose loving wife can’t bear children. He pines for a merchant’s 15-year-old daughter and, since he’s unavailable for marriage, goes to disturbing lengths to get what he wants. In “The Jonah,” a new job in Palestine in 1941may allow 16-year-old Cili to escape poverty in Romania. On the voyage over, however, she shares space with a reputedly “anti-Semitic, brutish and resentful” crew. These men soon unleash a horrific assault that leads to a violent end for all involved. Schwartz, who offers all three stories in English and Yiddish, delivers enthralling character-driven tales that gradually darken as they go on. The main characters, for example, are all fascinating—even when don’t evoke any sympathy; Friedl is unabashedly self-centered (as when she plays piano in spite of the downstairs neighbor’s complaints), and the rebbe is loathsome. The author weaves in rich historical particulars, from the political climate of decades past to an account of a real-life incident that inspired one of the tales herein. Smooth, descriptive prose (“And there he is, his wavy hair catching glints of the afternoon sunlight, his powerful arms shoveling mulch in the garden”) makes these short stories fly by. Siewert’s black-and-white pen-and-ink illustrations (one per tale) boast simple but crisp details, including one particularly daunting and bloody image. This exceptional collection’s brevity is sure to leave readers wanting more.
A set of mesmerizing stories that wraps up way too soon.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9789198721997
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Olniansky Tekst Farlag
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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