Fresh and affecting takes on deep if familiar ground.
Fifteen finely crafted, interconnected stories, loosely based on the life of novelist Pilcer (a novel: I-Town, 1987, etc.), that cumulatively reflect the tensions haunting the children of Holocaust survivors,
Zosha Palovsky, named after her two grandmothers who died during the war, prefers to call herself Zoe. Though born in Europe in a camp for DPs, she was only a toddler when she arrived in New York with parents Genia and Heniek. Zoe’s predicament—how to reconcile her dreams with her parents’ experience—is central to each story. The first, “Do You Deserve to Live?,” is narrated by Zoe herself, who works for a movie magazine where she summons her “schlock muse” to write about stars, though she’d rather be writing about her family. She takes drugs, sleeps around, and says what she thinks, all shocking to her parents—especially Genia, who wishes she were a proper young lady. In school, she wants to be like the Latino girls who wear lots of makeup, and she refuses to go to a Yeshiva (“Paskudnyak”). In “First Story” and “Survivor’s Dance,” Genia revisits the past, recalling, respectively, how she was saved from the gas chamber because she was wearing a white head scarf and instead was sent to a labor camp; and how she met Heniek after the war. In “Our Father Our King,” Heniek recalls his escape from Auschwitz. As she grows older, Zoe, who once arrived stoned at a Holocaust Memorial Service (“Remember 6,000,000”), begins to appreciate her parents more, accepting the burden of their legacy. A visit to Auschwitz (“Imagine Auschwitz”) helps her understand why they wanted her to thrive when so many others had died. And in the final piece, “Blue Paradise,” Zoe—now married and herself a mother—vacationing with aging Genia and Heniek, rejoices that they can “grow old, as no other member of the family could, old enough to love a grandchild.”
Fresh and affecting takes on deep if familiar ground.Pub Date: July 19, 2001
ISBN: 0-89255-261-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2001
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
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
