A clever but unnecessary project.
Though witty and erudite, these tales could have been left “untold.”
In a new collection that springs from his participation in the esteemed Gotham Writers Workshop, Rothstein takes stories from the Hebrew Bible and tells them from new perspectives in modern language. The author hopes to provide a fresh context for oft-told biblical tales, infusing them with life by allowing readers to see the material with new eyes. He succeeds to a certain extent. His retellings are detailed and scholarly, as they should be given the author’s doctorate in Jewish History from Harvard. The problem, however, is the same one that bogs down most attempts to elaborate upon the Biblical text, including those of Joseph Heller, Zora Neale Hurston and, more recently, Anita Diamant. Literary critic Erich Auerbach identified the greatness of the Bible in its sparseness, famously describing the text as “fraught with background.” It is as notable for what it does not say as for what it does. Efforts to fill in the Bible’s narrative gaps–no matter how well intentioned–disseminate the sublime sense of mystery. Thus Cassandra was doomed from the start, but the book is also flawed. Rothstein’s efforts to modernize the Bible often come off as flip–too superficial for such a foundational text. One first senses the encroaching campiness when a young Israelite, fresh out of Egypt and wandering the wilderness after the Passover, asks his mother, “Oh, and could you pass more manna, please?” By the time readers come upon the story of the minor prophet Hosea from the mouth of a literary agent, they may have had enough.
A clever but unnecessary project.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4392-0825-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A predictable romance tempers the energy of this tale about the healing powers of love.
Having escaped from a train headed to Auschwitz, Vera and Edith, two young Hungarian women, mourn their parents as well as Edith’s fiance, all likely lost to the Holocaust. Can they forge new lives in the postwar world?
After surviving the war by working on a farm, Vera and Edith realize their hometown of Budapest holds little promise. Fortuitously, a kind American officer sends them to Naples with a letter recommending Vera to the embassy. Once there, Vera, who is fluent in five languages, readily secures a job as secretary to Capt. Anton Wight, an American officer at the embassy. She’s intent upon taking care of Edith, who’s looking for male attention, which she finds with Marcus, a photographer ready to sweep her away dancing and maybe into social ruin. But it’s Vera who falls in love first, with the dashing Capt. Wight, who treats her to dinner dates and gifts. Although Vera tells Anton about her experiences during the war, including her guilt over surviving while her family presumably perished in the gas chambers, her attraction to him quickly outweighs any lingering trauma. However, Anton’s struggles with his own past derail their romance, plunging Vera into more heartache as her path traverses the globe. The romance between Vera and Capt. Wight is, unfortunately, much too easy, beginning with its inevitable whirlwind courtship. Publishing for the first time under her birth name, Abriel (Christmas in Vermont, 2019, etc., written as Anita Hughes) was inspired by her mother's life, and she deftly sketches the postwar world from Naples to Venezuela and Australia, with attention paid to the changed architectural and emotional landscapes. The rubble of bombed cities, the blank map of lost relatives, and the uncertainty of day-to-day survival outline the anguish of the lost generation.
A predictable romance tempers the energy of this tale about the healing powers of love.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2297-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
A heart-wrenching tale of love enduring all things in the face of evil.
When Tom Hope, a practical sheep farmer in 1960s Australia, married Hannah Babel, a twice-widowed Auschwitz survivor many years his senior, not everyone thought it was a good idea.
But then again, Tom was easily swayed by women. His first wife, Trudy, had left him. Twice. The first time, she returned pregnant with another man’s child. The second time, she joined a Christian commune, saddling Tom with raising her son, Peter. Tom and Peter became an amicable pair, herding sheep, pruning trees, and fixing engines together. So when Trudy returned two years later to claim Peter, it nearly broke both Tom, who refused to live alone again, and Peter, who had no love for this mother he didn’t know, much less the Jesus Camp. Luckily, for Tom, Hannah comes to town, eager to open a bookstore. She hires Tom to help renovate the old shop building, and the two quickly become lovers. Although Hannah has survived the Holocaust, the memories of those she lost, including her son, Michael, haunt her. Meanwhile, unluckily for Peter, the pastor in charge of Jesus Camp is a controlling patriarch who believes heartily in thrashing the spirit of God into misbehaving boys, especially those who run away, like Peter. And although Tom would gladly fight to keep Peter, both the law and Hannah are against him, for Peter isn't Tom’s biological son, and Hannah can't bear to love a boy again, a boy who could be lost just as Michael was. Can Tom and Hannah find a way to bring Peter home? Hillman (The Boy in the Green Suit, 2008, etc.) crafts a compelling tale, toggling among Tom’s, Hannah’s, and Peter’s perspectives, as he delineates the stripping of each heart and draws together the ties that bind them together again.
A heart-wrenching tale of love enduring all things in the face of evil.Pub Date: April 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-53592-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
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