A successful historical novel about the redemptive power of remaining true to oneself, no matter what the cost.
After a concentration camp survivor attracts the romantic interest of two men, she makes discoveries about life, love and forgiveness in this debut novel.
As a Jew in Nazi Germany, Klara Werner not only loses her mother, father and brother to the camps, but also her sense of identity. After she’s dragged from a pile of concentration camp corpses by the besotted Sgt. Sam Rosstein, she wakes up in an American hospital and discovers that she’s also caught the eye of her attending physician, Dr. Thomas Compton. Sam pays her regular visits at her bedside, and eventually Klara opens up to him completely. She reveals that she wasn’t a political prisoner as her uniform indicated, but the former love slave to an influential Nazi, who promised he would free her family in exchange for sexual favors. However, Thomas isn’t about to let Klara go to his Jewish rival, Sam; instead, he arranges to have the soldier abruptly shipped out and then steals his goodbye letter to Klara. Feeling abandoned, Klara agrees to marry Thomas, who doesn’t realize she’s Jewish. They return to Thomas’ Evangelical Christian home in the Southern United States, where Klara discovers she’s pregnant with Sam’s child. Will Klara be able to keep up the pretense of being a Christian in her new home? And how will Sam react when he discovers that the love of his life has married another man? The story’s dramatic possibilities are hampered by its tendency to tell rather than show its characters’ feelings: “How far have I fallen! Me, the once-proper young lady of respected Jewish Berliners….I am contemplating the loveless seduction of a man who has been nothing but kind to me.” However, Berman does convincingly convey the agony of a young woman treated horribly by circumstance. Klara’s callous but ultimately sensible adaptation to the world around her makes her a captivating protagonist. Overall, the author refuses to demonize any of her principal characters, and successfully portrays the heartbreak of living in a world where evil exists.
A successful historical novel about the redemptive power of remaining true to oneself, no matter what the cost.Pub Date: July 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497339927
Page Count: 262
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.
Catch-22 is an unusual, wildly inventive comic novel about World War II, and its publishers are planning considerable publicity for it.
Set on the tiny island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean Sea, the novel is devoted to a long series of impossible, illogical adventures engaged in by the members of the 256th bombing squadron, an unlikely combat group whose fanatical commander, Colonel Cathcart, keeps increasing the men's quota of missions until they reach the ridiculous figure of 80. The book's central character is Captain Yossarian, the squadron's lead bombardier, who is surrounded at all times by the ironic and incomprehensible and who directs all his energies towards evading his odd role in the war. His companions are an even more peculiar lot: Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who loved to win parades; Major Major Major, the victim of a life-long series of practical jokes, beginning with his name; the mess officer, Milo Minderbinder, who built a food syndicate into an international cartel; and Major de Coverley whose mission in life was to rent apartments for the officers and enlisted men during their rest leaves. Eventually, after Cathcart has exterminated nearly all of Yossarian's buddies through the suicidal missions, Yossarian decides to desert — and he succeeds.
Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1961
ISBN: 0684833395
Page Count: 468
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1961
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Back to a Jurassic Park sideshow for another immensely entertaining adventure, this fashioned from the loose ends of Crichton's 1990 bestseller. Six years after the lethal rampage that closed the primordial zoo offshore Costa Rica, there are reports of strange beasts in widely separated Central American venues. Intrigued by the rumors, Richard Levine, a brilliant but arrogant paleontologist, goes in search of what he hopes will prove a lost world. Aided by state-of- the-art equipment, Levine finds a likely Costa Rican outpostbut quickly comes to grief, having disregarded the warnings of mathematician Ian Malcolm (the sequel's only holdover character). Malcolm and engineer Doc Thorne organize a rescue mission whose ranks include mechanical whiz Eddie Carr and Sarah Harding, a biologist doing fieldwork with predatory mammals in East Africa. The party of four is unexpectedly augmented by two children, Kelly Curtis, a 13-year-old "brainer," and Arby Benton, a black computer genius, age 11. Once on the coastal island, the deliverance crew soon links up with an unchastened Levine and locates the hush-hush genetics lab complex used to stock the ill- fated Jurassic Park with triceratops, tyrannosaurs, velociraptors, etc. Meanwhile, a mad amoral scientist and his own group, in pursuit of extinct creatures for biotech experiments, have also landed on the mysterious island. As it turns out, the prehistoric fauna is hostile to outsiders, and so the good guys as well as their malefic counterparts spend considerable time running through the triple-canopy jungle in justifiable terror. The far-from-dumb brutes exact a gruesomely heavy toll before the infinitely resourceful white-hat interlopers make their final breakout. Pell-mell action and hairbreadth escapes, plus periodic commentary on the uses and abuses of science: the admirable Crichton keeps the pot boiling throughout.
Pub Date: Sept. 28, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-41946-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
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