A memoir that offers a rare, underrepresented perspective on World War II.
Maroscher (Short Stories: German 1.1 Reader, 2011, etc.) recounts the challenges of being a young boy in Europe during World War II and growing up in America in its aftermath.
The author’s parents met in Romania and wed in 1939, the same year that Germany invaded Poland, igniting World War II. He was born in 1943, after his brother, Gunter. His father—a Lutheran minister, schoolteacher, and “reluctant warrior”—was called to join the Hungarian army to fight the encroaching Russian forces. The Russians’ reputation for brutality was well- known, so Maroscher’s mother decided to flee with her two boys before traveling to her sister’s house in Weimar, Germany. She took them aboard a train that was evacuating wounded German soldiers, and she braved numerous hardships, including the constant threat of air raids. They stopped in Herzogenburg, Austria, and lived at a refugee camp, formerly a monastery. The conditions were cramped and deplorable, and food was so scarce the author’s mother had to threaten the director with a gun to have access to it; her boys were all but starving. They finally made it to Weimar and lived under American occupation when the war ended, which was relatively tolerable, despite the family’s reasonable suspicions of the conquering force. Things took a turn for the worse, though, when the Americans were replaced by Russians. Maroscher’s father had been gone for two years by that point, and his mother secretly sent a note to their old home, hoping to discover whether he was alive. The family was eventually reunited and, in the face of economic hardship, immigrated to the United States. Over the years, the family gradually realized the American dream, improving their lot and achieving impressive social mobility. Maroscher’s research, while reliant upon informal interviews with family members, is impressively meticulous and thorough. The author controls the narrative like an orchestra conductor, allowing each player’s contribution to have its part within the piece as a whole. Also, he’s refreshingly candid about his own life, particularly his sometimes-troubled teenage years, and he writes with wit and compassion. The memoir’s length and detail may be challenging for readers who aren’t familiar with the Maroscher family, but students of history will be engaged by this unusual story of World War II survivors.
A memoir that offers a rare, underrepresented perspective on World War II.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9816079-6-2
Page Count: 361
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Pedestrian mini-biographies of three women who are household names among members of the Cuisinart set. Although Reardon (Oysters: A Culinary Celebration, not reviewed) clearly esteems her subjects, all of whom she met while preparing this book, her narratives lack the necessary spark to make them more than the sum of their many — and not always interesting — details. While she records meetings among the women, she does not weave the three biographies into a coherent whole exploring the US culinary scene. Instead, she follows M.F.K. Fisher from youth through three husbands (material about her menage a trois with husband number one and future husband number two made it into The Gastronomical Me), the Depression-era beginnings of her writing career, and friendship with Julia Child, whom she met as a co-contributor to a book on provincial French cooking. Child's career took off while she lived in Paris, where she met Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, who wanted to produce a "big book" introducing American audiences to French cooking. Joining in with the willingness to work and the enthusiasm that later endeared her to television audiences, Child was instrumental in shaping what became the landmark Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The least appealing portrait is that of Alice Waters, who comes across as self-absorbed. Converted to fine dining during a student trip to France, Waters tried, on returning to Berkeley, to persuade fellow activists there to spruce up their menus, arguing that even striking French communists were discriminating eaters. With determination, she and her mostly novice employees made a success of their imaginative restaurant in Berkeley's "gourmet ghetto," and by the time The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook was published in 1982, Waters was, as Reardon notes, "So In, We Could Die." Strictly for the adoring fans of these culinary celebrities. Others will find it indigestible.
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-57748-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In parts memoir, travelogue, political treatise, and extended essay on the tangled question of what it means to be a Jew living outside of Israel. The founders of the state of Israel had hoped that all Jews would come ``home'' after some 2,000 years of exile. Yet 46 years after the birth of the state, less than half the world's Jews live there, and fewer Jews live in Israel than in the United States. Richler (Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!, 1992, etc.) offers no startling new insights into this phenomenon or into the growing split between Israeli Jews and those living in what is called the Diaspora. What he does offer is an intensely personal account of two journeys: one, of a teenager in Montreal who becomes an ardent Zionist in the years leading up to the creation of Israel in 1948; and two, of a Diaspora Jew in his 60s who visits Israel in 1992, measuring the state against his idealistic dreams of decades before, and measuring himself against the Israelis who had once been his teenage comrades in Canada. Making it clear that his sympathies lie with the left, Richler offers a clear picture of the modern state and its highly charged politics, based on numerous interviews and extensive reading. The more interesting parts of the book, however, have to do with Richler's personal engagement with Israel, even as he defends his choice to live in Canada. When a journalist tells Richler that he left the US because in Israel ``I am at home,'' Richler writes, ``But many of us, unapologetically Jewish, do feel at home in North America, the most open of societies.'' It is Richler's passionate, personal wrestling with this issue that sets this book apart from many others on the subject. A provocative and highly readable exploration of Israel in the mind of a Jew who has chosen not to live there, of interest primarily to other Jews aware that they have made the same decision.
Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43610-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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