Hits all the right notes.
A young woman is torn between her church's principles and her passion for secular music—and a forbidden love—in Schreck’s delicately tuned debut set in Depression-era Chicago.
Raised in the Danish-Baptist Church, Rose Sorensen sings popular songs from the radio when she thinks no one's around. She revels in the rich tones of Mahalia Jackson and yearns for the freedom to sing openly, but she knows her parents would disapprove. Her family was once affluent, but now her dour father manages tenement buildings, which Rose cleans, and they live in a cramped apartment. Rose's 14-year-old sister, Sophy, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, is Rose's biggest supporter, encouraging her to be happy and sing whatever she wants. Her cousin Rob also understands Rose's passion, and for her 21st birthday, he takes her on a covert outing to Calliope’s, a jazz club that welcomes blacks and whites. Rose’s life is transformed. Defying her parents, she secretly becomes lead singer for the Chess Men, an interracial band, and falls in love with black pianist Theo Chastain. Rose’s life sways back and forth between the club and Theo—who often pretends to be Rose’s driver to mask their relationship from others—and her role as dutiful daughter, continuing to sing at church and feigning interest in an acceptable suitor. Inevitably, Rose’s two worlds collide, and she and Theo have to make decisions about the Chess Men and their future. Schreck delivers an articulate, well-researched story with an inspirational message about following your dreams; and her passion for the era, its music and her characters is unmistakable.
Hits all the right notes.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0548-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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