An expansive novel that explores the lasting effects of war on successive generations.
In Snitz’s debut historical novel, a Holocaust survivor prospers in the United States and plays a role in global events.
Abraham Steinnermann has a strong sense of Destiny (the word is always capitalized here), and as a boy growing up in interwar Germany, he envisions himself following in the footsteps of the Teutonic warlord Arminius. He excels as one of the very few Jewish students at Heidelberg University, and his banking skills keep him safe until 1942, when he is arrested and sent to Auschwitz. He survives, falls in love with Merriam, an aid worker, and makes his way to the United States, where he once again succeeds in banking and plays a crucial role in the postwar redevelopment of Europe. Merriam joins him, and they have one son, Jack, who follows in his father’s successful footsteps. Jack, a Marine, is scarred by his service in the Vietnam War, but he returns to civilian life and a career in finance and avoids dealing with his war experiences and resulting alcoholism until his girlfriend, Kathleen, demands it. As Jack is getting his emotions under control, Abe, on the verge of retirement, is persuaded to lead an international development project in Vietnam, where he ends up kidnapped and tortured by a rebel group, an experience that affects him far more profoundly and permanently than his years at Auschwitz. It will be up to Jack to fight for his father’s release. The sprawling story succeeds in keeping its focus on Abe and his relationships with the people he loves and hates. Although Abe’s ego is ample (“Yes, I am without a doubt a magnificent example of manhood!”), the reader has to admit that his high self-esteem is merited, and he makes for a compelling protagonist. Snitz does a good job of exploring the characters’ psyches, particularly the differences between Abe’s and Jack’s reactions to their wartime experiences, as well as the friendships that can develop among people who respect each other deeply. The novel works best for a reader who is willing to suspend disbelief to a generous degree (the limited physical effects of Abe’s three and a half years in Auschwitz, his role in geopolitics) and accepts the narrative’s abrupt transformation into a military thriller during Abe’s kidnapping in Vietnam. (The book’s final chapters return to his relationships, in keeping with the overall themes.) The prose is sometimes awkward (“An abundance of overconfidence falsely consumed him, a seemingly single Jew who continued to safely dodge the long arm of conflict”), and the characters, particularly Abe, have a tendency to engage in long, melodramatic interior monologues (“I am a master at the game about to be played. I am the Alpha Male. My first salvo across the bow has been fired!”) that can become grating. The reader who is willing to have patience with Abe’s sense of Destiny will find the story a rewarding one.
An expansive novel that explores the lasting effects of war on successive generations.Pub Date: May 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5333-4164-8
Page Count: 454
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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