A quietly harrowing dissection of the Nazi madness.
The nightmare of German history creeps up on a family in this agonizing drama.
Born into a Germany steeped in genteel anti-Semitism, young Chaim Itzig resolves to abandon his Jewishness forever by changing his name to Christian Luftmann, converting with his wife Lotte to Catholicism and starting over in the pretty town of Dachau. There he prospers as an investment banker and a pillar of church and community, and congratulates himself for building an unassailably German identity. His masquerade turns darkly ironic after World War I, when economic collapse and civil war between communists and right-wing militias prompt his daughter Fanny and her war-hero husband Sepp, who know nothing of her parents’ buried past, to gravitate to the embryonic Nazi party and its promise of order and national revival. The growth of Nazi power and Sepp’s rise in the party hierarchy pose clear dangers to Christian—his family is not only ethnically Jewish but includes a feeble-minded sister who should be euthanized, according to Nazi doctrine—but his confidence in his ability to navigate the turmoil persists until he finally faces an appalling dilemma that he can’t finesse. Rubinstein infuses the narrative with a perceptive sense of history, showing how Nazism gelled out of an ambient racism and authoritarianism, Darwinian social theories, political chaos, class rancor and the longing to avenge a humiliating defeat and regain the mystical camaraderie of the trenches. Yet even as her characters imbibe this noxious brew, they remain complex and sympathetic: some join the Nazis out of fanaticism and hatred, some swoon over Hitler’s charisma, some cannily seize an opportunity to improve their status and prospects and some sign up because of a genuine sense of patriotism. Rubinstein gives us not just a moving saga of German Jewry in extremis, but a subtle, haunting account of how, little by little, out of the most human of motives, a whole society lost its soul.
A quietly harrowing dissection of the Nazi madness.Pub Date: Dec. 22, 2010
ISBN: 978-0965955225
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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