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
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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