Stark, unadorned fiction, well worth reading.
Deceptively simple in style, Schwarz’s narrative discloses depths of tragedy, of suffering, and occasionally of hope.
This debut novel covers the period from 1945 to 2000 and ranges geographically from the Polish-German border to New York City. In May of 1945 we meet several Holocaust survivors, including Pavel, who escaped from a camp three weeks before the liberation; Fela, a woman whose husband disappeared and who was presumably killed; and Chaim, a bright 14-year-old who serves as a teaching assistant at a postwar refugee camp. For the next 55 years we learn of the intertwined fates of these characters as well as of those who orbit them, including Fishl, who escaped along with Pavel; Hinda, Pavel’s strong-willed sister; and Sima, a teacher at the refugee camp who married Chaim. In the beginning Schwarz takes us from the physical difficulties of survival to the logistical difficulties of getting out of postwar Germany. Most of the survivors want to emigrate either to Britain or to the United States, but this desire involves complicated issues of negotiation and influence. Pavel and Fela first meet when they’re rooming in a widow’s house, and they fall into an affair, complicated by their lack of certainty about what happened to Fela’s husband. Pavel’s sister wants to marry a Jewish man in a Jewish ceremony, but an American rabbi insists on documentation that has literally gone up in smoke. Despite such impediments, Pavel and Fela marry and move to the United States, where Pavel has a tailoring business in New York. The characters raise families, face difficult business decisions and have an occasional affair, but despite renewing their lives they remain haunted by their past. As the title suggests, they remain displaced and, if not homeless, at least estranged. In one of the final scenes Pavel becomes enraged when a well-meaning American Jew suggests Pavel get the tattoo removed from his arm, implying that he should be ashamed of his past.
Stark, unadorned fiction, well worth reading.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-188190-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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