A dense exploration of the familial ties that bind one Jewish family.
A sprawling novel about family, faith and fortune that offers a fresh look at the lives of American Jews in the middle of the last century.
Leo Tolstoy, in Anna Karenina, famously said that while happy families are all alike, unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways. It’s hard to call the Forshtayns at the center of Maslin’s (…And Turn It Again, 2008, etc.) ambitious new effort unhappy, but they certainly are unique. In 1904, members of that family are forced to flee Vilnius, Lithuania, in the midst of deadly pogroms, moving to the United States to start life afresh. The book then follows multiple generations as a momentous new American century dawns. This decades-spanning novel reads a bit like family sagas such as Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks (1901) or John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga (1922), as it traces one clan’s changing fortunes over the course of many years, including those of the titular Sol. Yet the narrative eventually settles on the story of Sol’s favored nephew, Justin—later called Jacob—and tracks his academic and romantic maturation from New England to Illinois and back again. The story follows his progress through Harvard and the University of Chicago and his deepening love for a French-Canadian woman named Marie. Like Chaim Potok and Philip Roth before him, Maslin—himself a rabbi—focuses on the lives of 20th-century American Jews. But Maslin’s approach shares more with Potok’s than Roth’s; his style is true and earnest, and although he lacks Roth’s trademark sardonic wit, he has Potok’s eye for domestic detail. His book is fueled by human relationships, and there’s an intimacy and tenderness in his treatment of his characters that keeps his sweeping narrative from abandoning its concern with its heroes’ humanity. Furthermore, the novel is not only culturally, but religiously Jewish, as Maslin’s rabbinic training allows him to explore not only Judaism’s traditions, but also its scriptures and sacred spaces. His engagement with Judaism’s spiritual pith—and with the temptations that may draw one away from it—serves as the book’s sturdy backbone.
A dense exploration of the familial ties that bind one Jewish family.Pub Date: April 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495325366
Page Count: 454
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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