A complex, resonant love story, set in a detailed landscape of Nazi-occupied Europe.
Neff tells the story of a couple caught up in the rise of the Third Reich in this debut historical novel.
Dieter Meister, an orphaned pianist, was made homeless when the Nuremberg laws shuttered the Jewish-run music school where he resided, so he’s forced to make his way in the streets of Berlin. While working as a pub musician, playing songs for off-duty Nazi officers, Dieter encounters Sofie von Seigler, a music school graduate and the daughter of a Wehrmacht general. They are united by a shared secret: each is the child of a Jewish mother. Dieter’s has been dead for many years, but Sofie’s remains alive, working for Poland’s intelligence service. The couple shares a love of music, particularly American music, and they hope that art might insulate their lives from the political madness roiling around them. It can’t: after the discovery of the Oster Conspiracy, in which some members of the Nazi military sought to overthrow Hitler, the two young musicians flee the country, due to Sofie’s involvement. Their journey, from the streets of Prague to the surreal village of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, will bind them together but ultimately separate them. Although the times require Dieter and Sofie to live extraordinary lives—dodging agents and pursuers, playing the roles of smugglers and spies—they still remarkably attempt to maintain their lives as artists. Despite the constant threat of war and genocide, they consistently face calamity with their love of music and each other. Neff is an impressive storyteller, both as a shaper of prose and as an architect of plot. For example, a memoir, penned by Dieter at Theresienstadt and later smuggled to Sofie’s mother in London, is central to the book’s structure. It provides a story within a story with its own chilling narrative voice: “They say that there are only two ways for a Jew to leave Theresienstadt—on a train to the East, or in a plain pine box.” The author also shows a mastery of detail and context—indeed, the book is a history lesson as much as a novel—and his controlled maneuvering of his characters through the events of the period make this book stand out from the still-crowded field of World War II epics.
A complex, resonant love story, set in a detailed landscape of Nazi-occupied Europe.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-938462-25-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: Old Stone Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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