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
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
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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