A powerful story that exalts the strength of the human spirit.
Max Beissinger and Hanna Ginsburg fall in love, but their relationship is destined for heartache when Hitler comes to power and outlaws marriage between Germans and Jews.
Max, a bookstore owner, stumbles across Hanna playing her violin at the Lyceum and is smitten. Hanna takes care of her sick mother and practices her instrument in hopes of earning a place in an orchestra. She conceals her growing affair with Max from her mother and sister, who would not approve of her dating outside the Jewish faith. Max has a secret, something he discovers in a journal his father kept, that causes him to suddenly vanish, often for months at a time, telling no one where he is going or where he has been. Hanna breaks off their engagement because of Max’s disappearances, but Max believes his secret can save Hanna should the fraught political climate take a turn for the worse as Hitler continues to rise in power. One evening, when he and Hanna are at his bookstore, Nazis bash the door open. Max grabs Hanna to secure her in a hidden closet, but she breaks away and rushes back for her violin. The Nazis grab them both, and they are separated. The next thing Hanna knows, she awakens in a field, not remembering the events of the past 10 years. Max, who had a mysterious glimpse of the future, knows she must be alive and works to find her. Cantor propels readers back and forth from the 1930s to the '50s in this well-researched historical novel, showing how the past impacted the future, including the secret of Hanna’s lost decade. Readers may want to urge Max to confess his secret to Hanna...but then there would be no story. Cantor elevates love as a powerful force that transcends tragedy and shows how music speaks to even the cruelest hearts.
A powerful story that exalts the strength of the human spirit.Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-286332-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
A unique and unexpectedly revealing English language debut.
A sly take on modern work culture and social conformism, told through one woman’s 18-year tenure as a convenience store employee.
Keiko Furukura, a 36-year-old resident of Tokyo, is so finely attuned to the daily rhythms of Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart—where she’s worked since age 18—that she’s nearly become one with the store. From the nails she fastidiously trims to better work the cash register to her zeal in greeting customers with store manual–approved phrases to her preternatural awareness of its subtle signals—the clink of jangling coins, the rattle of a plastic water bottle—the store has both formed her and provided a purpose. And for someone who’s never fully grasped the rules governing social interactions, she finds a ready-made set of behaviors and speech patterns by copying her fellow employees. But when her younger sister has a baby, questions surrounding her atypical lifestyle intensify. Why hasn’t she married and had children or pursued a more high-flying career? Keiko recognizes society expects her to choose one or the other, though she’s not quite sure why. When Shiraha—a “dead-ender” in his mid-30s who decries the rigid gender rules structuring society—begins working at the store, Keiko must decide how much she’s willing to give up to please others and adhere to entrenched expectations. Murata provides deceptively sharp commentary on the narrow social slots people—particularly women—are expected to occupy and how those who deviate can inspire bafflement, fear, or anger in others. Indeed, it’s often more interesting to observe surrounding characters’ reactions to Keiko than her own, sometimes leaving the protagonist as a kind of prop. Still, Murata skillfully navigates the line between the book’s wry and weighty concerns and ensures readers will never conceive of the “pristine aquarium” of a convenience store in quite the same way.
A unique and unexpectedly revealing English language debut.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2825-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
A near-anthropological study of male insecurity.
Wayne’s latest foray into the dark minds of lonely young men follows the rise and fall of a friendship between two aspiring fiction writers on opposite sides of a vast cultural divide.
In 1996, our unnamed protagonist is living a cushy New York City life: He's a first-year student in Columbia’s MFA program in fiction (the exorbitant bill footed by his father) who’s illegally subletting his great-aunt’s rent-controlled East Village apartment (for which his father also foots the bill). And it is in this state—acutely aware of his unearned advantages, questioning his literary potential, and deeply alone—that he meets Billy. Billy is an anomaly in the program: a community college grad from small-town Illinois, staggeringly talented, and very broke. But shared unease is as strong a foundation for friendship as any, and soon, our protagonist invites Billy to take over his spare room, a mutually beneficial if precarious arrangement. They are the very clear products of two different Americas, one the paragon of working-class hardscrabble masculinity, the other an exemplar of the emasculating properties of parental wealth—mirror images, each in possession of what the other lacks. “He would always have to struggle to stay financially afloat,” our protagonist realizes, “and I would always be fine, all because my father was a professional and his was a layabout. I had an abundance of resources; here was a concrete means for me to share it.” And he means it, when he thinks it, and for a while, the affection between them is enough to (mostly) paper over the awkward imbalance of the setup. Wayne (Loner, 2016) captures the nuances of this dynamic—a musky cocktail of intimacy and rage and unspoken mutual resentment—with draftsmanlike precision, and when the breaking point comes, as, of course, it does, it leaves one feeling vaguely ill, in the best way possible.
A near-anthropological study of male insecurity.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63557-400-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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