An interesting story of immigrant struggle handicapped by excessive summary.
In this historical novel, Sharp (The Duke Don’t Dance, 2012) presents a frontier family as it recounts its history to one another on the eve of the Civil War.
Set mostly in the cellar of a homesteading house in the Platte Purchase in Missouri, the novel uses adolescent William Ebhart as a focal point for both sides of his family — the Ebharts and the Fentresses — to describe their intertwining history as they’ve moved westward after immigrating. The novel touches on land disputes, the Mexican-American War and other patches of American history. The cellar, built by William’s grandfather, Jacob, has become a place of congregation and mystery where the family swaps stories and legends, including tales of bodies buried behind its walls. Many of the novel’s main events are told in summary, typically in a monologue by one of its many characters, or later, in an epistolary format. This not only robs the scenes of urgency, it strains credulity when characters deliver lengthy, unconvincing speeches filled with historical details. For example, Frank, a war buddy of William’s father, relays a story of the Mexican-American War: “Well, in May of ’46, word reached Leavenworth that Polk finally got the Congress to declare war….Col. Doniphan was organizing a unit of Missouri volunteers that we called the First Missouri Mounted Volunteers. Sterling Price left Congress, had himself made a colonel, and began to organize another unit, the Second Missouri.” Such superfluity typifies Sharp’s eagerness to insert historical detail into the narrative with little dramatic justification. It’s unfortunate, too, because on the rare occasions when Sharp writes in fully developed scenes, the writing shines. For instance, William finds himself unintentionally hidden while his father engages in a private conversation about a past love; it’s a tense moment that underscores the need for such drama in other chapters. Sharp’s decision to make this a multigenerational story worsens its problems; William isn’t so much a protagonist as he is a receptor of information, and without a clear narrative focus, the reader is left digesting a lot of information with little emotional involvement with the characters.
An interesting story of immigrant struggle handicapped by excessive summary.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-1478350323
Page Count: 282
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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