A tragic, lovely, and important Yiddish novel in translation.
Maze’s posthumous novel presents the beauty, poverty, and tragedy of Belarus during the First Russian Revolution as seen through the eyes of a young Jewish girl.
Dineh was born in an impoverished region in Russia, now known as Belarus, and her family is one of only two Jewish households among many peasant families in the village of Ugli, although they have contact with Jewish families in surrounding communities. Her father, Sholem, owns an orchard and works the land, and he sells liquor from his cellar to tavern owners in nearby villages. With his wife, Peshe, he has five other children in addition to Dineh, and struggle is an everyday part of their lives. To make matters worse, the czar commands Sholem and other Jewish people to sell their land, either to the government or to people of the Russian Orthodox faith; two of Dineh’s siblings openly speak of socialism as revolution looms. Dineh’s wishes are simpler: to get an education like her brothers’ and to learn the Psalms, study the Talmud, and be able to read, write, tell stories, and recite prayers with the same lyricism as her father. However, Dineh’s fierce attachment to her home is ill-suited for a time of violent social change, and she’s forced to immigrate to America. This novel by Maze, who died in 1962, was posthumously edited by her confidant Shaffir and is skillfully translated from Yiddish by Taub. Its prose manages to be beautiful and biting yet straightforwardly plain at the same time: “impoverished Russian peasantry were rich in lyricism….They would pawn the last shirt in their closet and sing out and cry out their bitter fate.” The book is often digressive; for example, the narration tells of the many tragedies that cause a woman to cry herself blind and of the heartbreaking events that befall Dineh’s brother; however, these tangents don’t take away from the reading experience; on the contrary, they only sharpen the picture of the bygone era. (The novel’s table of contents promises translator notes and an appendix that were not available for review.)
A tragic, lovely, and important Yiddish novel in translation.Pub Date: April 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-7343872-9-2
Page Count: 269
Publisher: White Goat Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
