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
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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