A quietly harrowing third book (and second story collection, after A Scrap of Time, 1987) from the Polish Holocaust survivor and author. Hardly a voice is raised throughout these 21 vignette-like pieces, which nevertheless contain worlds of implication about the destruction of a culture, plus the mingled resilience and despair exhibited by those who outlived their nearest and dearest. Simple, conversational language and a reserved focus on domestic minutiae effectively underscore Fink's subtle emphasis on the miraculous nature of simply having survived. Her collection has the effect of a song cycle in which a central melodic theme is repeated with what seem infinite variations. The characters include a teenaged girl who intuits the transitoriness of her own and her young lover's brief happiness (``The End''); a timid accountant who returns after years of working in a city to his parents' village, only to find its residents being marched away to their deaths (``A Closed Circle''); and a luckless young mother (``Sabina Under the Sacks'') who, having escaped a painful arranged marriage, cannot escape the approaching SS. Fink can construct a powerfully echoing story from the simplest materials imaginable (in ``In Front of the Mirror,'' a girl vainly primps before her dressmaker, trying to blot out remembrance of both their murdered families), or stun you with a story's simple climactic, unanswerable question: ``Did you ever see someone who was killed in the war but is still alive?'' Further evidence of her genius for understatement is displayed in two tales presented as playlets: ``Description of a Morning'' and the superb title piece, a Rashomon-like account of a middle-aged woman's quest to learn whether her long-missing sister has or has not survived the war. Few books about the Holocaust are as moving as this one. It seems almost cruel to say so, but one hopes Fink has more stories to tell. (First serial to the New Yorker, Story, Venue, and the Threepenny Review)
Pub Date: Aug. 11, 1997
ISBN: 0-8050-4557-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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