An absorbing saga.
A multilayered novel tracking the evolution of a lavishly wealthy Jewish banking family in the years preceding and during World War II.
The House of Goldbaum—a banking institution stretching across Europe—has financed railways and palaces and abetted world leaders; its influence is so ingrained that “on dull days, it was said, they hired the sun, just for themselves.” The business maintains its dominance by adhering to the old ways: communicating almost exclusively through letters written in Yiddish; prioritizing its Jewish heritage; and, most importantly, orchestrating marriages between Goldbaum houses to keep the businesses tightly linked. It’s this custom that spurs the marriage of headstrong Greta Goldbaum, from the Austrian house, to the second son of the London branch, buttoned-up, fastidious Albert. From the start, it’s an uneasy match. Greta wanders through the London Goldbaum mansion “perpetually off-kilter,” while Albert exhibits a greater interest in trapping butterfly specimens than in sleeping with his new wife. Meanwhile, rumblings of war affect business. The German government is seeking a loan to shore up its army; pogroms rage across Russia; and the Goldbaums vacillate between openly wielding political influence and “labor[ing] unobtrusively behind the seat of power, instrumental but overlooked.” It seems just as Greta and Albert learn to tolerate and then love one another, the Continent is forced into an arms race, compelling the Goldbaum houses to weigh allegiances to family and nation—and consider the waning scope of their influence in a world altered by war. In perspectives that alternate among Greta, Albert, and other well-constructed characters—Greta’s brother Otto; cousin Henri; and Karl, a Viennese sewer rat—Solomons (The Song of Hartgrove Hall, 2015) provides an achingly detailed yet sweeping narrative examining the anxieties of war and crumbling of the Old World order. Despite writing stilted dialogue, Solomons has an uncanny way of lulling readers into a complex sense of prewar unease—from the Goldbaums’ mansion to the Jewish Poor Boys' Home in Vienna—making for a rewarding look into the fragility of power and the complexities of Jewish identity in the early 20th century.
An absorbing saga.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1297-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
