A postmodern fairy tale, by turns evoking horror and wonder, that scrutinizes the relationship between myth and history.
In a fabulist novella, a Jewish man bound for a concentration camp throws one of his twin babies from a moving train; a Polish countrywoman finds the child and raises her as her own.
As he and countless other deported French Jews rush toward doom, a father realizes that his wife does not have enough milk to feed both of their infants and so makes the unthinkable decision to throw one of the babies, wrapped in a prayer shawl, from the moving train. As fairy-tale logic would have it, a poor childless woman in the forests of Poland discovers the baby, and she and her husband risk their own lives to raise the girl as their own. Thus the father’s Sophie’s Choice is redeemed and shown to be one of great humanity. On its face, this story—newly available in English thanks to Wynne’s beautiful translation from French—is about the devastating lengths to which parents will go for the sake of their children and about how saving one life can mean endangering another. But it is also an unlikely tale of survival during the Holocaust that is entirely aware of its unlikeliness. Grumberg uses fairy-tale conventions, but he does so winkingly. This self-consciousness reaches its zenith with a metafictional epilogue that directly addresses the idea of “true stories,” calling upon the reader to question their assumptions about historical fiction and about the relationships between myth and truth. With subtlety and intention, the novella ultimately implores us to consider the purpose of literature after tragedy: well-trodden thematic territory after 1945, to be sure, but approached here in a unique way. It is difficult, in 2020, to write a work of fiction about the Holocaust that is original; even simply in this sense, Grumberg’s work succeeds where many have failed.
A postmodern fairy tale, by turns evoking horror and wonder, that scrutinizes the relationship between myth and history.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06298179-0
Page Count: 96
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
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