A riveting tale of the generational havoc Jews suffered as a result of global persecution.
In this debut historical novel, a Lithuanian girl who grows up under Soviet rule suddenly learns to her astonishment that her biological mother is Jewish and lives in Israel.
Raisa’s life is caught in the crucible of European history—first, her native Vilna, Poland, is transformed into Vilnius, Lithuania, under the oppressive rule of the Soviet Union. Next, life becomes intolerable for Jews after the Nazis invade, changing what was once a “center of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe” into a dangerously inhospitable environment for Jews. A trusted friend, Pani Orlovich, betrays Raisa and her family—Pani reports their hideout to German authorities. While fleeing for her life, Raisa is separated from her husband, Israel. Raisa’s traumatic experiences haunt her—she wonders whether she is the “only Jew left on the planet.” She makes a tortured decision to leave her infant daughter, Sonia, with a stranger, Elena Stepanovna Sokol, who is likely better equipped to guarantee both the child’s safety and emotional well-being. Reiches poignantly chronicles Sonia’s upbringing under Soviet rule and her callow commitment to an idealistic Communism. Her stance is challenged by the revelation that Elena isn’t her biological mother and that Sonia is, as a matter of ancestry, a Jew. Now in Israel, Raisa presents Sonia with a choice as enticing as it is aching—stay in Lithuania with the only mother she’s ever known or join Raisa in Israel. The author powerfully captures a dark period for European Jewry in this heart-wrenching and complex tale, deceptively conveyed in simple, unadorned prose. At the heart of her novel is the question of unsettled identity—Sonia is a Jew whether she likes it or not in the eyes of her peers: “Being Jewish is pretty complicated. Once you are born Jewish, there is no choice. The world will not let you not to be Jewish.” This is a story that in one way or another has been told many times before, but Reiches’ take is nonetheless emotionally intelligent and historically authentic.
A riveting tale of the generational havoc Jews suffered as a result of global persecution.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4834-9347-3
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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