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
A little-known story that will have special resonance for today’s resisters.
Based on an actual incident in Nazi-occupied Belgium, Ramzipoor’s debut is a tragicomic account of fake news for a cause.
Structured like a heist movie, the novel follows several members of a conspiracy in Enghien, Belgium, who have a daring plan. The conspirators do not intend to survive this caper, only to bring some humor—and encouragement for resisters—into the grim existence of Belgians under Nazi rule. To this end, the plotters—among them Marc Aubrion, a journalist and comic; David Spiegelman, an expert forger; Lada Tarcovich, a smuggler and sex worker; and Gamin, a girl masquerading as a male street urchin—intend to...publish a newspaper. And only one issue of a newspaper, to be substituted on one night for the regular evening paper, Le Soir, which has become a mouthpiece for Nazi disinformation. Le Faux Soir, as the changeling paper is appropriately dubbed, will feature satire, doctored photographs making fun of Hitler, and wry requests for a long-overdue Allied invasion. (Target press date: Nov. 11, 1943.) To avoid immediate capture, the Faux Soir staff must act as double agents, convincing (or maybe not) the local Nazi commandant, August Wolff, that they are actually putting out an anti-Allies “propaganda bomb.” The challenge of fleshing out and differentiating so many colorful characters, combined with the sheer logistics of acquiring paper, ink, money, facilities, etc. under the Gestapo’s nose, makes for an excruciatingly slow exposé of how this sausage will be made. The banter here, reminiscent of the better Ocean’s Eleven sequels, keeps the mechanism well oiled, but it is still creaky. A few scenes amply illustrate the brutality of the Occupation, and sexual orientation works its way in: Lada is a lesbian and David, in addition to being a Jew, is gay—August Wolff’s closeted desire may be the only reason David has, so far, escaped the camps. The genuine pathos at the end of this overdetermined rainbow may be worth the wait.
A little-known story that will have special resonance for today’s resisters.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-0815-7
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
Whitehead continues the African-American artists' inquiry into race mythology and history with rousing audacity and...
What if the metaphorical Underground Railroad had been an actual…underground railroad, complete with steam locomotive pulling a “dilapidated box car” along a subterranean nexus of steel tracks?
For roughly its first 60 pages, this novel behaves like a prelude to a slave narrative which is, at once, more jolting and sepulchral than the classic firsthand accounts of William Wells Brown and Solomon Northup. Its protagonist, Cora, is among several African-American men and women enslaved on a Georgia plantation and facing a spectrum of savage indignities to their bodies and souls. A way out materializes in the form of an educated slave named Caesar, who tells her about an underground railroad that can deliver her and others northward to freedom. So far, so familiar. But Whitehead, whose eclectic body of work encompasses novels (Zone One, 2011, etc.) playing fast and loose with “real life,” both past and present, fires his most daring change-up yet by giving the underground railroad physical form. This train conveys Cora, Caesar, and other escapees first to a South Carolina also historically unrecognizable with its skyscrapers and its seemingly, if microscopically, more liberal attitude toward black people. Compared with Georgia, though, the place seems so much easier that Cora and Caesar are tempted to remain, until more sinister plans for the ex-slaves’ destiny reveal themselves. So it’s back on the train and on to several more stops: in North Carolina, where they’ve not only abolished slavery, but are intent on abolishing black people, too; through a barren, more forbidding Tennessee; on to a (seemingly) more hospitable Indiana, and restlessly onward. With each stop, a slave catcher named Ridgeway, dispensing long-winded rationales for his wicked calling, doggedly pursues Cora and her diminishing company of refugees. And with every change of venue, Cora discovers anew that “freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with trees up close but from outside, the empty meadow, you see its true limits.” Imagine a runaway slave novel written with Joseph Heller’s deadpan voice leasing both Frederick Douglass’ grim realities and H.P. Lovecraft’s rococo fantasies…and that’s when you begin to understand how startlingly original this book is.
Whitehead continues the African-American artists' inquiry into race mythology and history with rousing audacity and razor-sharp ingenuity; he is now assuredly a writer of the first rank.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-385-53703-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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