A thoughtful and affecting novel about generational trauma.
In the fifth of Zimler's novels about the Zarco family, mystical connections impart life-affirming meaning to Polish émigrés who lost most of their family in the Holocaust.
Told through multiple voices in various eras, the novel focuses on Benni and Shelly Zarco, two cousins separated by tragic circumstances. Shelly, who is 11 years older, makes it out of Nazi-controlled Warsaw first, escaping through the forest on his eventual flight to Montreal. A larger-than-life character who opens a downtown sporting goods shop there, he attempts to cope with trauma through his uncontrollable sexual urges for both women and men—including his close cousin. Smuggled out of Warsaw and raised in hiding in the town of Brzeziny by a gentile music teacher to whom he becomes devoted, young Benni is tracked down years later in Poland by Shelly. In New York, he becomes a successful tailor, loving father, and anti-war protester who struggles to see the difference between the Holocaust and the bombing of innocents in Vietnam. Forever haunted by the ultimate sacrifice his great-grandmother made in taking his place on a transport delivering Jews to a Treblinka-bound train, he turns to the cabala for answers. Tracing his Sephardic roots back to Portugal, he hears the thoughts of living and departed people in his head. So do other members of his extended family through their involvement in the arts and medicine. Dialogue is not Zimler's strong suit, and the long coda tracing the history of Jewish persecution back to Egypt is an unnecessary add-on. But the latest effort by the author of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon (1998) succeeds with its strong emotion, memorable characters, and mosaiclike structure. Zimler's handling of the continuum of time is both moving and unsettling.
A thoughtful and affecting novel about generational trauma.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-913640-64-4
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Parthian Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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