Unlike the protagonists in so much recent fiction, Emanuel is never a victim but an acute observer of human nature,...
Blecher’s second and final novel, written when he was 27, two years before his death in 1936, tells the obviously autobiographical story of a young Romanian man’s experience after he is diagnosed with Pott’s disease, a tuberculosis of the spine.
Emanuel, who has been studying chemistry in Paris, is “terrified” and “bewildered” when he gets his medical diagnosis. His doctors, portrayed as decent, kind men, send him to a sanatorium at Berck-sur-Mer. With a dreamlike sense of detail, Blecher describes Emanuel’s adjustment to his new life. Placed inside a body cast, Emanuel feels he has joined a new world of “not being ‘fully alive.’ ” He debates whether to become resigned to his situation, what his doctor describes as cicatrisation, the growing insensitivity as emotional scar tissue forms. Although Emanuel experiences melancholy he finds he almost enjoys his new idleness. He also finds plenty of friendship, romance and drama within the closed society of the sanatorium where emotions are as often heightened as they are dulled by physical limitations. He witnesses the complexity of the patients’ reactions to their illness. Some die, some recover, some who recover physically remain permanently scarred emotionally. Soon Emanuel is passionately involved with Solange, a former patient still living in the town—once cured, many find it difficult to return to their old lives. Emanuel drives a horse-drawn stretcher trolley into the countryside (a photo on the book’s back cover shows a handsome, young Blecher in such a carriage beside an unnamed woman) where he and Solange dine at inns and have sexual interludes near the sea. But Solange’s devotion, which he has fostered, becomes an irritation. He escapes her and the sanatorium by moving into a villa on the beach. When he finally has his cast removed, he has life-affirming casual sex with an Irish woman, then travels to Switzerland.
Unlike the protagonists in so much recent fiction, Emanuel is never a victim but an acute observer of human nature, including his own.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-905-847-18-1
Page Count: 228
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
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 TO SCREEN
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