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The Incarnation of Edda Ritter

Name: The Incarnation of Edda Ritter
Author: Wayne Edward Hanson
ISBN: 978-1-4954-8882-5

From the Edda Series series , Vol. 1

by Wayne Edward Hanson ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 20, 2015

A refreshingly honest read that paints an uncompromising portrait of life in all its failures, intricacies, and emotions.

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In a tumultuous period in Germany’s history, a young girl grows into adulthood as she chases down her mother’s ghost in this historical novel.

Edda Ritter’s strongest memory of her childhood is a yellow kitchen. She also remembers the chocolates her father used to buy for her and the trips they used to take together. But those things seem like part of a different life after her father takes her to live in an orphanage in Berlin early in the 20th century. Edda’s mother died during childbirth and her father is about to go on a long journey, so someone has to take care of her. As she navigates life in a Catholic orphanage run by nuns—some cruel, some kind—and later serves as a Red Cross volunteer in a hospital, she begins to learn the realities of life, love, and war. The First World War brings chaos to Germany, and Edda feels adrift. Convinced that she can remember her mother dying as she was born, she searches for more memories of her as she also seeks for her father’s approval. Finding herself with child and working at a cabaret in 1920s Berlin, she still feels like something is missing, and both her country’s fate and her own are still uncertain. Hanson (Medicine Dreams, 2011, etc.) uses simple, spare prose to build a picture of Edda as someone both lost and extremely insightful about her position in life. Poised on the cusp of World War II, she observes that “in a time of blame, those chosen as targets need not be the actual cause of one’s misfortune, for it is the sting of one’s failure one wishes to assuage, and any target will do, especially those long suspected but not openly accused.” Balancing the book’s plot on the tipping point between the wars also gives it an appropriate poignancy that never crosses the line into cliché. Edda’s journey is a personal one, and although she’s a prickly character who isn’t always likable, she’s always human.

A refreshingly honest read that paints an uncompromising portrait of life in all its failures, intricacies, and emotions.

Pub Date: July 20, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-4954-8882-5

Page Count: 246

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION

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WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES

by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

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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

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK TO SCREEN
Hulu’s ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’ Adds To Cast

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THE UNSEEN

by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020

A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.

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Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.

Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.

A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.