None of the characters shine enough to inspire or enlighten readers.
A tale of several generations of women cursed to love men who love other women.
As the book opens, Gabriela Siton relates the story of her mother Luna’s death, and in describing her final year, Yishai-Levi, a journalist and nonfiction author, captures the family dynamic and lays out the drama—Luna doesn’t get along with Gabriela; she’s unhappy with her husband, David; she didn’t get along with her mother, Rosa; and all this has left Gabriela at loose ends. Gabriela seeks answers from her Aunt Allegra in Tel Aviv, trying to understand the family “curse,” and then the book shifts mostly to Rosa’s and Luna’s viewpoints. It abruptly shifts back in the end to Gabriela’s, skipping over years, when earlier, the narrative plodded slowly through days. There are so many characters that we only get a brief look at some of them, and so many disappointments and heartbreaks that they begin to lose their impact. Ordinary lives can be made beautiful, but when they belong to characters who are either unsympathetic or rudimentary, they are rendered ineffective. The characters’ faith, which influences so many of the important decisions in their lives, mostly comes across as routine, habit, or even superstition. Some of the characters become involved in the struggle for modern Israel, and their political fervor is similarly underdeveloped.
None of the characters shine enough to inspire or enlighten readers.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-07816-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A mother and her child-prodigy daughter struggle to survive the Holocaust by telling stories and remembering the power of...
Rosner’s debut novel is a World War II story with a Room-like twist, one that also deftly examines the ways in which art and imagination can sustain us.
Five-year-old Shira is a prodigy. She hears entire musical passages in her head, which “take shape and pulse through her, quiet at first, then building in intensity and growing louder.” But making sounds is something Shira is not permitted to do. She and her mother, Róża, are Jews who are hiding in a barn in German-occupied Poland. Soldiers have shot Róża’s husband and dragged her parents away, and after a narrow escape, mother and daughter cower in a hayloft day and night, relying on the farmer and his wife to keep them safe from neighbors and passing patrols. The wife sneaks Shira outside for fresh air; the husband visits Róża late at night in the hayloft to exact his price. To keep Shira occupied and quiet the rest of the time, Róża spins tales of a little girl and a yellow bird in an enchanted but silent garden menaced by giants; only the bird is allowed to sing. But when Róża is offered a chance to hide Shira in an orphanage, she must weigh her daughter’s safety against her desire to keep the girl close. Rosner builds the tension as the novel progresses, wisely moving the action out of the barn before the premise grows tired or repetitive. This is a Holocaust novel, but it’s also an effective work of suspense, and Rosner’s understanding of how art plays a role in our lives, even at the worst of times, is impressive.
A mother and her child-prodigy daughter struggle to survive the Holocaust by telling stories and remembering the power of music.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-17977-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
This first novel, ostensibly about the friendship between two boys, Reuven and Danny, from the time when they are fourteen on opposing yeshiva ball clubs, is actually a gently didactic differentiation between two aspects of the Jewish faith, the Hasidic and the Orthodox. Primarily the Hasidic, the little known mystics with their beards, earlocks and stringently reclusive way of life. According to Reuven's father who is a Zionist, an activist, they are fanatics; according to Danny's, other Jews are apostates and Zionists "goyim." The schisms here are reflected through discussions, between fathers and sons, and through the separation imposed on the two boys for two years which still does not affect their lasting friendship or enduring hopes: Danny goes on to become a psychiatrist refusing his inherited position of "tzaddik"; Reuven a rabbi.... The explanation, in fact exegesis, of Jewish culture and learning, of the special dedication of the Hasidic with its emphasis on mind and soul, is done in sufficiently facile form to engage one's interest and sentiment. The publishers however see a much wider audience for The Chosen. If they "rub their tzitzis for good luck,"—perhaps—although we doubt it.
Pub Date: April 28, 1967
ISBN: 0449911543
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1967
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