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
A fine demonstration of the power and versatility of Glück’s verse, this volume will delight fans and intrigue newcomers.
Glück’s international reputation as an accomplished and critically acclaimed contemporary poet makes the arrival of her new volume an eagerly anticipated event. This slender collection meets these expectations with 44 poems that pull the reader into a realm of meditation and memory. She sets most of them in the heat of summer—a time of year when nature seems almost oppressively heavy with life—in order to meditate on the myriad realities posed by life and death. Glück mines common childhood images (a grandmother transforming summer fruit into a cool beverage, two sisters applying fingernail polish in a backyard) to resurrect the intense feelings that accompany awakening to the sensual promises of life, and she desperately explores these resonant images, searching for a path that might reconcile her to the inevitability of death. These musings produce the kinds of spiritual insights that draw so many readers to her work: she suggests that we perceive our experiences most intensely when tempered by memory, and that such experiences somehow provide meaning for our lives. Yet for all her metaphysical sensitivity and poetic craftsmanship, Glück reaffirms our ultimate fate: we all eventually die. Rather than resort to pithy mysticism or self-obsessive angst, she boldly insists that death creeps in the shadows of even our brightest summers. The genius of her poems lies in their ability to sear the summertime onto our souls in such a way that its “light will give us no peace.”
A fine demonstration of the power and versatility of Glück’s verse, this volume will delight fans and intrigue newcomers.Pub Date: April 9, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-018526-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Spielman’s debut charms as Brett briskly careens from catastrophe to disaster to enlightenment.
Devastated by her mother’s death, Brett Bohlinger consumes a bottle of outrageously expensive Champagne and trips down the stairs at the funeral luncheon. Add embarrassed to devastated. Could things get any worse? Of course they can, and they do—at the reading of the will.
Instead of inheriting the position of CEO at the family’s cosmetics firm—a position she has been groomed for—she’s given a life list she wrote when she was 14 and an ultimatum: Complete the goals, or lose her inheritance. Luckily, her mother, Elizabeth, has crossed off some of the more whimsical goals, including running with the bulls—too risky! Having a child, buying a horse, building a relationship with her (dead) father, however, all remain. Brad, the handsome attorney charged with making sure Brett achieves her goals, doles out a letter from her mother with each success. Warmly comforting, Elizabeth’s letters uncannily—and quite humorously—predict Brett’s side of the conversations. Brett grudgingly begins by performing at a local comedy club, an experience that proves both humiliating and instructive: Perfection is overrated, and taking risks is exhilarating. Becoming an awesome teacher, however, seems impossible given her utter lack of classroom management skills. Teaching homebound children offers surprising rewards, though. Along Brett’s journey, many of the friends (and family) she thought would support her instead betray her. Luckily, Brett’s new life is populated with quirky, sharply drawn characters, including a pregnant high school student living in a homeless shelter, a psychiatrist with plenty of time to chat about troubled children, and one of her mother’s dearest, most secret companions. A 10-step program for the grief-stricken, Brett’s quest brings her back to love, the best inheritance of all.
Spielman’s debut charms as Brett briskly careens from catastrophe to disaster to enlightenment.Pub Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-345-54087-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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