A thoughtful, troubling addition to the literature of the Holocaust.
A descendant charts a Jewish family’s unusual course through the years of the Third Reich.
In 1938, Adolf Hitler ordered that the Munich synagogue be demolished, and its rubble was bulldozed into the Isar river. Years later, writes English novelist Dunthorne, workmen noticed that the “rubble buried in the riverbed was unusually ornate” and began the long course of excavating it to restore the building. It’s a perfect metaphor for his book, which, among many other storylines, charts his Jewish great-grandfather’s problematic career as a chemical manufacturer who promoted the received wisdom of the day that thorium and other radioactive elements constituted “a miracle cure and the source of mysterious powers,” used as ingredients in things as various as toothpaste, energy drinks, and even lingerie. Great-grandfather Siegfried also made poisonous gases, some quite diabolical: One penetrated a gas mask and prompted retching, driving the wearer to take off the mask and inhale still more deadly components. Siegfried’s laboratory was in Oranienburg, a center not just of scientific research but also of the SS, the chemical plant next door to a concentration camp, and a production facility that made uranium oxide for the secret Nazi atomic bomb project. Siegfried and his family left for Turkey when anti-Jewish laws were promulgated, but in exile he still worked for the chemical firm, one of whose poisonous gases was used against Kurds in eastern Turkey, killing some 13,160 civilians around the town of Dersim, which, Dunthorne writes, “has led to rumors that the Nazis saw Dersim as a proof of concept.” That Siegfried was aware of the implications of his work may have led, after he emigrated to the U.S., to a mental breakdown. Dunthorne’s winding story embraces other family members whose histories were less freighted with guilt, but Siegfried’s lies at its heart as a cautionary tale of accommodating evil.
A thoughtful, troubling addition to the literature of the Holocaust.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781982180751
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
© Copyright 2026 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.
