Witty at the same time that it's tragic, surreal even in its hyper-reality, Boschwitz’s novel is a remarkable achievement.
A newly rediscovered masterpiece set in the days following Kristallnacht.
When pounding erupts at the front door of his Berlin apartment with voices crying out for his arrest, Otto Silbermann escapes out the back. It’s Kristallnacht, 1938, and Silbermann, a wealthy, respectable, and—crucially—Jewish businessman doesn’t know where to go. He takes a train, and then another. He goes from Berlin to Hamburg and then back to Berlin. He goes to Aachen and Dresden and Berlin once again. Days pass, and Silbermann is still on a train. His name is recognizably Jewish, so he avoids using it—no hotels for Silbermann, with their registration forms—but his face is not, and his bearing is so upright and respectable he doesn’t seem particularly suspect. Still, he’s in constant danger of arrest. In its dark absurdity, Boschwitz’s brilliant novel recalls Kafka, particularly The Trial, in which threat looms like an edifice—and yet, reading, you’re also struck by a panicked, choking laughter. And like Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich, Silbermann thinks that by clinging to the last vestiges of middle-class life, he can avoid or outpace death. “Am I traveling?” Silbermann wonders. “No! I’m stuck in the same place, like a person who takes refuge in a cinema where he sits in his seat without moving as the films flicker away—and all the while his worries are lurking just outside the exit.” Then, too, the story behind the novel’s publication is almost as intriguing as the novel itself. Boschwitz, who was half Jewish, was only 23 when he wrote the book; he died in 1942 on a transport ship traveling from Australia to England under German bombardment. The novel briefly appeared in Britain and the United States but never in the German original. In 2015, it was rediscovered by chance. Boschwitz is remarkable not only for his prescience—the novel might be one of the very earliest depictions of the aftermath of Kristallnacht—but also for his rare insight and minutely observed depictions of characters from every strata of German society.
Witty at the same time that it's tragic, surreal even in its hyper-reality, Boschwitz’s novel is a remarkable achievement.Pub Date: April 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1250317148
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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