A philosophically searching but overly moralistic tale.
In this fourth installment of a fictional series based on a true story, a teenage Egyptian experiencing a crisis of faith undertakes a meditative pilgrimage.
In 2015, nearly two dozen Coptic Christians were taken hostage by the Islamic State group in Egypt and summarily executed. There was only one survivor, Mekhaeil Zacharias, a 16-year-old whose life was spared in order to become a living testament to the band’s unmerciful intent. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Mekhaeil’s life continued to be a tumultuous one—he traveled to India, was hunted by IS assassins, became an international celebrity, and finally landed in New York City. In this volume, he now experiences profound spiritual confusion about who he is—removed from his native land, he’s unsure if he’s still a Coptic Christian or any kind of Christian at all. Father Bishoy, a kind of mentor to Mekhaeil, encourages him to replicate the pilgrimage once taken by St. James, El Camino de Santiago, which begins in France and concludes in northwestern Spain. During his journey, Mekhaeil meets and converses with many travelers and receives a series of lessons about the history of various world faiths, a litany that begins to feel like a textbook course on comparative religion. At one point, he tells a journalist: “I have learned about the Muslims and the Jews, the Buddhists and the Hindus, the Methodists and other Christian denominations, but I’m just not sure I believe everything I have been taught by my parents and the Coptic priests.” Kelley (Hiding in America, 2018, etc.) has based his series on the IS beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya in 2015; there were no survivors. In this installment, the author thoughtfully details Mekhaeil’s philosophical odyssey and his prayerful shift from thinking about God to addressing his concerns to him. While the narration in these pages frequently references the book’s predecessors, it’s understandable on its own. The author writes in lucid and affecting prose and powerfully limns Mekhaeil’s “beaten soul,” the consequence of his theological doubts as well as his survivor’s guilt. But Kelley tries too hard—laboriously and earnestly—to impart a lesson, which makes the novel feel didactic. For example, preceding the story are two introductory notes in which Kelley feels compelled to explain the work’s meaning in advance.
A philosophically searching but overly moralistic tale.Pub Date: June 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5320-5357-3
Page Count: 332
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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