Those Who Save Us

Book Description

For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmführer of Buchenwald.

Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life.

Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame.

Customer Reviews:

Powerful and poignant.......2007-09-16

Jenna Blum has written a powerful, sometimes piercing portrayal of someone who I suspect could be herself and her relationship with her own mother..yet it is a novel so the story does not need to be verified... the book was definitely worth reading.

Amazing story.......2007-09-09

This turned out to be one amazing story and told exactly how it happened. The only problem I found was that the author didn't complete the story to my satisfaction. I would have wanted to know what happened with Trudy's life and with Anna's....going further than the author carried it...but in all, it was truly a page turner and there was so much truth and validicity to it.

Read This Book!.......2007-09-08

There are very few books I've read lately that I literally have not been able to put down. This is one of them! Gripping from the very beginning, this story is riveting and thought provoking. It really makes one wonder what they would do if placed in the same position. I also must admit, I was teary at the very end. Please read this book. You will be glad you did. Note - I am deliberately saying nothing about the plot, I don't want to give ANYTHING away!!

those who saved us.......2007-08-31

one of the best books i read this year. it gave you insight into the people who were human beings and how they coped with war.

COULD'T PUT IT DOWN.......2007-07-19

This is a very sensitive, intrigueing book about a horrible time in history. The characters are so real that you feel like you know them personally. Loved it.

Average customer rating:

A hard book to put down
I couldn't put it down!
The Comic and the Nazi
An Excellent Read
Not jealous. Well ...maybe slightly.

Not Me: A Novel
Michael Lavigne
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1400063116
Release Date: 2005-11-01

Book Description

Not Me is a remarkable debut novel that tells the dramatic and surprising stories of two men–father and son–through sixty years of uncertain memory, distorted history, and assumed identity.

When Heshel Rosenheim, apparently suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, hands his son, Michael, a box of moldy old journals, an amazing adventure begins–one that takes the reader from the concentration camps of Poland to an improbable love story during the battle for Palestine, from a cancer ward in New Jersey to a hopeless marriage in San Francisco. The journals, which seem to tell the story of Heshel’s life, are so harrowing, so riveting, so passionate, and so perplexing that Michael becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about his father.

As Michael struggles to come to grips with his father’s elusive past, a world of complex and disturbing possibilities opens up to him–a world in which an accomplice to genocide may have turned into a virtuous Jew and a young man cannot recall murdering the person he loves most; a world in which truth is fiction and fiction is truth and one man’s terrible–or triumphant–transformation calls history itself into question. Michael must then solve the biggest riddle of all: Who am I?

Intense, vivid, funny, and entirely original, Not Me is an unsparing and unforgettable examination of faith, history, identity, and love.

Customer Reviews:

A hard book to put down.......2007-08-09

This book is a tapestry of different themes on identity, alongside the age-old question of "when is one relieved of their sins?" I really enjoyed this completely different approach to the subject matter of WWII and the Concentration Camps, and became so engrossed in the novel that I just couldn't put it down. I thoroughly recommend it.

I couldn't put it down!.......2007-07-24

"Not Me" poses a horrifying concept, and is beautifully written. It raises so many moral questions, page by page, and is an exciting read that makes you think about the meaning of identity, purpose, redemption, family, truth, etc.

The Comic and the Nazi.......2007-04-30

This is a first novel. It suffers from cliche at times, and in the end gets terribly sentimental about being an American Jew in one's fifties without having understood what being Jewish means - having 'missed out' on the Holocaust and Zionism. But it reads fast. The first person narrator - a middle-aged son struggling to cope with his dying father - is a quirky, funny, sometimes maudlin soul trying to sort out his life. Separated from his wife and son in California, this middle-aged comic is alone in Florida and having a hard time. Failing at being a father himself, the narrator quickly learns that his ailing octogenarian Dad is not exactly who he says he is. But the ambiguity of Dad's identity is (too) quickly extinguished through the translation of the old man's German diaries. While not exactly a war criminal of high order, Dad, aka, SS officer Heinrich Muller, explains how he transformed himself from accountant to victim in a few short weeks before the Camps were overrun by Allied armies. Muller starves himself, adds the blue ink number tatoo to his arm, adopts the name of a corpse, and then gets swept up in the displaced persons program. Soon he is on his way to a kibbutz in Palestine. He ends up in the Palmach, fighting in Israel's war for independence. Romance and self-hatred take hold in equal measure. Perhaps he should simply run down to Gaza and tell the Egyptians who he really is and leave these Jews behind him?! These parts, set south of Jerusalem and along the northern end of the Negev (and his continuing dialogue regarding his self-hatred) are the best part of the book. In the end, however, the tension over Dad's identity doesn't bring resonance to the American son's personal issues so much as give us a look at the way in which people can get caught up in the crushing events of the 1940s, especially if they were European Jews, and German. The character of the 'Nazi' father is better imagined, I think, than that of the comic son, and the possiblity of "lying narrator" (the father's diaries and conversations with the son) might've been better exploited in order to leave the reader with greater puzzle and wonderment. It gets a bit sappy and repetitive - how many times will his mother's hat float across the pool as an expression of grief and deracination? The opportunity for a cross-generational discourse is sidelined for nebulous emotional effect. We do see, however, that one can make up a life; the fear of being tainted by our original sins can lead us to utterly transform the self. The searing experience of the camps and the death of a daughter reveals for the author an old testament God whose knowledge of our fundamental character is not forgiving.

An Excellent Read.......2007-04-11

I read a lot of "Holocaust fiction," but this book escaped my notice until the author was named a runner-up for the new Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature last month. Now that I've read the novel, I can see why it's earning such accolades. Hopefully, now that the book is available in paperback it will reach a wider readership. I agree with all the other readers who found it a "page-turner" or "couldn't put it down." That was my experience, as well. I won't soon forget it.

Not jealous. Well ...maybe slightly........2007-02-28

As an acquaintance of the author, I naturally harbored the faint hope that his first published novel would be horrid. However, I confess to having inhaled the whole book from cover to cover. Not Me is as funny and trenchant as Phillip Roth - if Roth could still write funny - with the added fillip of a whodunit element which, in my case, kept me up until 3AM. Note to S Spielberg: A great first movie role for Seinfeld.

Average customer rating:

You'll think about this again and again
Embrace the difference in life
Brother to brother
Couldn't put it down.
excellant read

The Same Embrace
Michael Lowenthal
Manufacturer: Dutton Adult
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0525944168

Amazon.com

The endless conflict between sameness and difference is at the heart of Michael Lowenthal's novel The Same Embrace, in which identical twins Jacob and Jonathan battle themselves and one another to become individuals even as they are inextricably linked through genes, family, and history. Empathetically close as children, the brothers begin to separate in their teen years, most decidedly by Jacob's decision to come out and Jonathan's turn to Orthodox Judaism. The conflict of brother against brother, biblical in its resonance yet filled with contemporary image and idiom, is also the grounding that allows Lowenthal to write about his main concern: how humans must create themselves as individuals while remaining part of a larger social fabric. Just as Jacob and Jonathan wrestle with one another over questions of sexuality and religion, The Same Embrace embodies two distinct and not usually conflated genres: the novel of gay identity and the Jewish family novel. Like the brothers' move towards reconciliation, one of the novel's strengths--along with its understanding of the human heart--is its ability to join these themes into a unified, extremely satisfying entirety that both moves and enlightens us. --Michael Bronski

Book Description

This moving and contemporary portrait of two brothers' estrangement and journey to reconciliation addresses the larger themes of family and sexual identity. It is the story of second-generation American Jews, identical twin brothers Jacob and Jonathan, who have chosen radically different lives. Jacob is a gay activist in Boston, while Jonathan lives the strict life of an Orthodox student at a Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Weaving together themes of sibling rivalry, assimilation, the Holocaust, and AIDS, The Same Embrace is a stunning debut novel that depicts a quintessentially American search for belonging.

Customer Reviews:

You'll think about this again and again.......2006-03-20

I read this book when it first came out years ago, and, like Lowenthal's other book, "Avoidance" I kept recollecting some of the dramatic dilemmas and situations he presents. I decided therefore to re-read it, and see if it held the same interest as it did originally: it did.

Lowenthal has written only two books that I know of, but he is a talented writer who has been masterful in both novels at presenting different but complementary plot lines, and at the end the reader is left with the sense that a big lesson about life has been vicariously but vividly experienced. Just don't expect wrenching story-telling.

Read this and "Avoidance", and see if you aren't also haunted by these books and characters for years to come.

Embrace the difference in life.......2005-06-03

THE SAME EMBRACE tells the story of identical twins, Jacob and Jonathan, who once shared an unbreakable bond and synchronized their breathing, had gone separate ways divided by religious faith, desire, and sexual identity. Jonathan has taken up Orthodox Judaism, settled in a yeshiva in Jerusalem, and scrupulously observed all religious creeds. Halfway around the world at home, Jacob, also at the age of 24, is a gay activist in Boston who has just mourned the death of his partner and assumes little hope for a heartwarming reconciliation with his estranged brother.

Jacob has always blamed the church and its invidious indoctrination for his brother's isolation from family. The novel begins with Jacob's mission to convince Jonathan returning home from Israel, at least for a visit. The trip, as promising as it initially seems to be, with both brothers being unusually polite to each other, meets a disastrous conclusion as Jacob's inappropriate (borderline lewd) behavior with Jonathan's study partner sends him packing homeward. What has attempted to break the ice between the brothers causes a breach that teeters on the edge of hatred.

The narrative in THE SAME EMBRACE alternates between the present and Jacob's childhood memories. Entwined with family anecdotes and Jewish traditions are Jacob's own reflections of his coming out to his family. Lowenthal writes about Jacob's indecipherable fear and insecurity of his sexual identity as well as his guilt of his self-censorship with an insurmountable adroitness. The novel sets against the backdrop of a time that is struck by the convergence of so many momentous happenings: the initiative campaign, the Bush/Clinton/Perot presidential debate, the Columbus quincentenary (1992) and the launch of AIDS quilt display. In the heat of a politics-dabbled milieu, Jacob contrives to rebounce from anger and alienation toward reconciliation and acceptance. An unexpected arrival of an unheard-of relative during a family mourning spurs him onto love and hope in reconciling with his twin brother and rekindles a hopeful future.

THE SAME EMBRACE embraces the essence of a young gay man's inner struggle: a prickling dilemma of wanting to tell the truth but lacking the courage. Jacob finds himself caught in the hypocrisy that his relationship with his family is superficial and even fake because people are not seeing the real him. THE SAME EMBRACE evokes the love the that allows families to embrace the difference of one another.

Brother to brother.......2003-01-18

Reading this again four years after I first read it, I'm still amazed at the scope and impact of the story. "The Same Embrace" centers on Jacob, gay and Jewish, whose twin brother Jonathan has embraced Orthodox Judaism and now lives in Israel. While mostly about the struggle of the two brothers to reconnect after years apart, the book also deals with the legacy of the Holocaust, the impact of family secrets, and the essence of family. For me though, it is the story of the two brothers that resonates so clearly and brilliantly. And by having the brothers be so similar and yet so different, Lowenthal presents the reader with a fascinating portrait of what could almost be two halves of a whole: one man trying to bring together his sexuality and his religious beliefs. Even without this context in mind (whether it's intended or not), "The Same Embrace" is a marvelous, insightful, and ultimately joyous story that expands past the genre distinctions of Jewish fiction and gay literature to a wholly American novel of family.

Couldn't put it down........2002-06-21

Now this is a good book. I don't share Lowenthal's perspective, so hopefully it's of some value that as a "general reader" I found this an utterly compelling read. He holds his own with my favorite classic novelists.

excellant read.......2000-10-04

From start to finish the writer holds you with his tale of life. His Jewish background parallels so many of our lives that are gay and Jewish. Michael Lowenthal does a superb and gripping job of a not so uncommon struggle for today's gay Jewish male. Hopefully, he will continue the story where he leaves off, as he has left me hungry for more details of what happens between jacob/danny/jonathan/their father/aunt ingrid etc!

Average customer rating:

A GOOD READ. VERY INTERESTING.
You Can't Go Home Again
He sounds like a funny and likable guy
longitude and attitude
Pathetic Misrepresentation

No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home
Chris Offutt
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0684865513

Book Description

Wearing blue jeans meant I was a local. The gray in my hair meant I'd been away. Word of my impending return spread throughout the county. Some stories would have me moving in with my folks because one of them was very sick. Another had me purchasing my old grade school and converting it into an art colony. I was living in a houseboat on Cave Run Lake. I had AIDS and came home to die. My wife left me and I was back to hunt another. One story said it wasn't Chris Offutt but his younger brother who was investing in the new mall. When the truth finally outed, everyone knew I had bought the old Jackson place, which meant I must be doing pretty well for myself because they were asking a pretty penny for it. On top of that, somebody else said I was teaching at the college, but no one believed the college would ever allow that.

In his fortieth year, Chris Offutt returns to teach at his alma mater, Morehead State University, the only four-year school in the Kentucky hills. With the humblest of intentions, he expects to give back to his community, hoping to become, quietly, a hero of sorts. Yet present-day reality collides painfully with memory, leaving Offutt in the midst of an adventure he never imagined: searching for a home that no longer exists.

During that same year, Offutt records the story of his parents-in-law, Arthur and Irene, Holocaust survivors who emigrated to New York from Poland in 1946. Their moving chronicle of exile and war entwines with Offutt's attempt to find a sense of safety and home. But it is Arthur who sagely states that "home is illusory" and there are "no heroes" in life.

The New Yorker crowned Chris Offutt's 1993 memoir, The Same River Twice, the "memoir of the decade." No Heroes is a sure contender to reclaim that honor, lifting the tale of one man's homecoming to universal significance.

Customer Reviews:

A GOOD READ. VERY INTERESTING. .......2007-06-11

In many ways, this work is more complex than you would first think. Note the various reviews here. This work seems to bring out all sorts of emotions. This work is not easy to review. I suppose the best place to start is to state my humble opinion in reference to a couple of points. First, I don't think that the author was actually "putting down" the good folks in his old home town. I think he was just calling it the way he saw it. I have traveled through this area of the country extensively, spent quite a lot of time there. To be honest, the author nailed a certain segment of the population quite well. Now let me state that I am from and live in the Ozarks is S.W. Missouri. Some of the folks here, myself included, make the people of the author's home down seem down right sophisticated. I have traveled and lived all over this country for more years than I care to admit to. To be quite frank, the people the author described here can be found in just about ever town in the U.S., from coast to coast. Kentucky does not have lock on "town characters." Secondly, the author indeed has some rather harsh things to say about Morehead State University. This was silly on the author's part. Schools are schools. I work with a lot of Harvard and Yale graduates that have far less "education" than a lot of Jr. College drop outs I work with. School is what you make of it after you get out. Those attending this college should not feel bad. After all, the author himself graduated from this "inferior school," made the most of it and seems to have done alright for himself.

Now, as to the book: It is actually rather well written. I do like the author's style. The story was good, easy to follow and simply interesting. This is actually two books in one. The first is about the author and his family returning to the hills of Kentucky to teach and possibly make a difference. The second story is that of his in-laws, both of whom were Holocaust Survivors. At this point I will state that I think it a shame that the author choose to use this method to tell these two stories. Both really should have been extended and made into two separate works.

The author is very, very good ad descriptions, the country, the people the background. The author is quite good a capturing emotions. Chris Offutt is obviously quite a talented writer. I should also note that a few other reviewers have stated that the author made most of the stories here up. I doubt that very much. The stories just ring too true. He may have done a bit of embellishment here and there, but is that not what most authors do?

I am giving this one only four stars rather than five for two reasons. First, there is an element of "sour grapes" that runs through the story which I found unbecoming and secondly, I feel the author should have devoted an entire book to his in-laws and their stories.

I do recommend this one highly. It is a very good read.
D. Blankenship

You Can't Go Home Again.......2005-03-07

The author writes about his returning to his home to his eastern Ketucky roots to teach at the local college, and "give back" to his hometown. That part of the book was informative for me since I did not know a whole lot about that part of the world and its people. But, the really intersting part of the book is the parallel story he tells about his mother and father inlaw, who are Holocaust Survivors.
That part of the book, which documents his inlaws' survival stories, is especially memorable. Now the fascinating aspect of all of this to me was that the two stories, ie his memoir, and the inlaws' history, have virtually nothing to do with each other.
The two stories remain separate throughout the book.

Offutt's style of short concise sentences, and chapters makes for easy reading. His insights into the Appalachian culture
are eye opening for us outsiders.

I recommend the book, especially for those who might be considering "going home" to give back. According to Offutt, it isn't easy.

He sounds like a funny and likable guy.......2004-06-21

The book No Heroes suffers from a severe dislocation, when Chris Offutt tries to tell the story of Arthur and Irene, his in-laws, and their shattering Holocaust experiences, but basically giving them short shrift and only a few paragraphs compared to his lengthy tales about encountering old chums, teachers and girlfriends when he returns to teach in the hills of Kentucky.

His little hostage to fortune, Sam, doesn't like school there, so Chris doesn't stay long. In a way it's a shame he wrote this book because it makes nearly every person in the Kentucky hills sound like a moron. He is unforgiving in his characterization. can people really be this small-minded and idiotic? Maybe so, but he isn't doing the Kentucky visitors bureau any favors.

At the same time, he's great at describing things, and the colorful dialect of many of his old Morehead buds will provoke a round of belly laughs, some of their sayings are both priceless and profane. He sounds like a funny and likable guy, except he's a little bit on the preachy side.

Not really a success, but maybe he's written other and better things, I'd read more of him.

longitude and attitude.......2003-01-11

this memoir reads like a journal and seems to square many assumptions the writer went into a larger world to confirm. my own experience: leaving the south, making friends from other cultures, then coming back (for what?) line up almost perfectly with the trajectory of Mr. Offutts story. Progress has been made, work needs to be done.
Locals who have problems with this book, I have advice: go and be.
Chris is actually doing you a service...

Pathetic Misrepresentation.......2002-10-29

Yes, I am educated enough to spell misrepresentation. I am also a graduate of Morehead State University and soon will have a Masters of Business Administration. Wait it gets better. I also have already obtained an MCSE, MCSA, Dell Certified Technician, A+ Certification, Brainbench Computer Technical Support, ExPert Rating Computer Technical Support, and 17 other professional certifications. Could this be possible? Yes, it is. Morehead State University is a fine institution and there are not as many "hicks" roaming the streets as Mr. Offutt would like to believe. There is no mistaking his imaginative talent and excellent authorship, but his egotistical dreamland is very questionable. I would recommend this great work of FICTION to anyone out there who enjoys a good Kentucky redneck or imbreed joke because you are just as imaginative as Mr. Chris Awful (oops, eye lowst meye diktonary!!!)

Average customer rating:

Double Vision: A Self-Portrait
Walter Abish
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0679418687
Release Date: 2004-02-03

Book Description

Does one ever escape from the family? How much do we understand about our own past? How do we come to be who we are?

Walter Abish, the internationally acclaimed author of How German Is It, examines these questions through the prism of his own experience, and confronts and encapsulates the historic upheavals of the mid-twentieth century in this brilliant, deceptively simple, and quietly wrenching account of his two journeys.

The first begins in Vienna, where Abish was born in the 1930s in the Jewish, but not-too-Jewish, household of a prosperous perfumer. Then it ricochets around the world as his parents flee first to France (his mother had to sneak alone across the Italian border), then to war-torn Shanghai under Japanese occupation, just ahead of Mao’s army, then to Israel.

Incapable of understanding his family’s desperate situation, Abish as a boy creates his own private world, filtering out precarious and terrifying realities.

Abish describes fantastic events in the coolest tones. In precise, haunting detail, he records the perceptions of a child who registers and remembers what he will only later understand. He writes of the day in the park when a stranger suddenly screams “Jews out!” and he and his frail grandmother run for the exit in a panic as the other children and grandmothers stand and watch; the day his father is released by the Gestapo because a man in the room owes him money that he has never tried to collect and says, “Let Abish go—he’s okay”; of the time his father speaks to him about inheriting his perfume business, as they stand on the deck of a ship bound for China.
The first journey recounts the flight; the second journey chronicles the return: Abish writes about how, in the 1980s, he went on a tour to Germany to launch the translation of his award-winning novel How German Is It—a book he wrote without ever having set foot there, deliberately, because he wished to elicit the idea of Germanness in what was “a fantasy of Germany.” This tour of what to him is an unfamiliar society includes a side trip to Vienna, where he glimpses the life he might have experienced and has the horrifying feeling that he never left.

Double Vision is a book that cuts to the quick. With unflinching candor, humor, and affection, Abish re-creates the way it feels to be a child and to look at your parents and wonder who they are. To be an adult and catch them in every corner of your personality. To look back on the world of your youth and realize both what you noticed and what you missed. It is a stunning achievement.

Average customer rating:

Beautiful Book
A blast and mostly satisfying
The Truth Was Disturbing Enough
Reminded me of a book you had to read for school
A Real Turn Off

A Blessing on the Moon
Joseph Skibell
Manufacturer: Algonquin Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The English Disease

ASIN: 1565121791

Amazon.com

Chaim Skibelski rises from a pit of slaughter, leaving his dead townsmen and family behind, and returns to his home--now occupied by non-Jews. "In front of every house were piles of vows and promises, all in broken pieces. How I could see such things," he wonders, "I cannot tell you." So begins this magic-realist fiction, which is also a keen allegory of European Jews' war and postwar experience. "You think they can't kill us as often as they wish?" the narrator cries, and his distrust seems right. Though Chaim and the Rebbe are the only ones to have escaped the sudden roundup, they too, it soon becomes clear, are dead. The Rebbe has been transformed into a crow while Chaim's body seeps with blood and half of his face is missing. But if he's dead, why isn't he in the World to Come and why can some Poles and one German soldier see and hear him?

In his first novel, Joseph Skibell has created a fantasia both hideous and beautiful, a combination of mysticism, nightmare, and even humor. After Chaim and the Rebbe dig up other putrefied victims, the sorry, brave group moves painfully away from the village. Freezing days pass, perhaps years. "If you were the Rebbe, floating high above us, what you would see would be a great river of blood cutting a swath through the frozen winter hills." The author anatomizes the pilgrims' differences, cultural and religious, with love and wit. They are disputatious even in death--their debates threatening to overwhelm what holds them together. Though the phrase tour de force has been much abused, A Blessing on the Moon is exactly that: a daring fiction that shouldn't succeed on any level yet works on many.

Book Description

Winner of the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters; and the Steven Turner Award for a First Book of Fiction, Texas Institute of Letters. Chaim Skibelski was a successful businessman, father, and husband before he was killed along with all the other Jews from his small Polish town during the Holocaust. Instead of peacefully resting in the World to Come, Chaim is left to walk the earth, wounds and all. On his journey Chaim unexpectedly finds hope, compassion, and renewal beneath the human propensity for destruction. A fabulous tour de force in the tradition of Jerzy Kosinski's THE PAINTED BIRD and the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Customer Reviews:

Beautiful Book.......2005-03-23

Those who didn't "get" parts of the plot or some of the metaphors should wonder at how they so easily focused on the details of plot and forgot all about the enormity of the murdered people at the beginning of the story. Did they "get" the Holocaust? Do they "understand" it? Surely, not understanding why the rebbe turned into a crow or why Ola was attracted to Ola as she was, etc, etc, shouldn't be more vexing than our inability to "get" the enormity of the Holocaust and so many people so easily slaughtered.

Genocide is a singularity. In the width and breadth of its design and its reality, in the evil manifested in it, in the way it challenges both man and God for their passivity and complicity. It lays bare the worst in us. The Nazi Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide and the Armenian genocide are different events. They had different causes, different timelines and evolutions. They are not the same events. Each has its own horror. But the evil laid bare is the same ineffable singular reality.

We are creative creatures, though, and even though we cannot possibly understand and explain the Holocaust or the abiding reality of Genocide and evil that lurks beneath the surface of things, we have to try. We're built that way. And we succeed most when we look at bits and pieces of the whole. It's like looking at the sun. You can't do it directly. So things like filters and lenses come into play.

Skibell has found a wonderful way of doing this, telling us the story of Chaim and his journey through the filter of Hasidic stories. I hesitate to call them folktales or legends, because that would be to misunderstand the role of such stories in Hasidic life. The fantastical stories one reads involving miracles and magic are part of Jewish religious ideas and practice, not fiction. And I read this story as one of those Hasidic tales, rather than as a novel. There are deep truths in it, and some of the most concrete and beautiful images I can remember in fiction.

A blast and mostly satisfying.......2005-01-05

I thought this book was very engaging and superb at the emotional play. There's a scene where, after encountering the horrors of his fellow Jews beginning to rot, Chaim meets a soldier (now beheaded and carrying his head around) and in a fury starts kicking the head down the hill. And yet later, he carries the soldier's head for him. To me, that combination (horror, hilarity and unowed kindness) somehow characterizes the experience of the Jewish people in an intimate, gut-level way that is hard to capture.

Though other readers may be disconcerted by a certain lack of connection between the pieces, I enjoyed it quite thoroughly.

The Truth Was Disturbing Enough.......2003-03-07

Magical Fiction about the Holocaust, how will this instruct us when the truth was more unsettling than anything that can be imagined? This novel was well-written, yes, disturbing and painful to read, as any fiction with such subject matter must be, but I found myself wondering why I went on this journey and what the young American author felt he could tell me that survivor fiction and non-fiction had not already. I felt the Holocaust exploited and regretted having read this book. I'm going back to my Primo Levi, my Paul Celan.

Reminded me of a book you had to read for school.......2001-07-27

You know I felt like I was reading a book back in highschool. Lots of things that must have been meaningful but I sure didn't get the symbolisms. I felt like if I went into class tomorrow my wise professor would tell me that black crows always symbolize death, or something to that effect. I do think there were some very creative aspects to this book. It reminded me of a giant dream sequence, at last it was the way my dreams seem to go, people appearing suddenly and things not always being logical but that's the way dreams are. I've studied a lot of the Holocaust, this was an interesting twist, but left me kind of empty toward the end. It was interesting early on but I wasn't on the edge of my seat waiting for the ending. Probably would make a good book for a reading club or a Torah study group.

A Real Turn Off.......2001-04-16

The book begins with a mass execution of Jews in a Polish village during World War II. Immediately you enter a world of bizarre fantasy that depicts the experience of the book's dead hero Chaim. His spirit returns to his former home only to find it occupied by a greedy and cold hearted Catholic family. The members of this Polish family are so self occupied that they pay little notice of their daughter/sister dying from TB in an upstairs bedroom. Chaim pities the child and befriends her. Then the book takes a sick turn and our hero, who is the ghost of an old man has sex with this young girl. After that I could no longer read this book, into the trash it went. Reading about a Pedophile's sexual encounter with a child is not my idea of entertainment.

Average customer rating:

Brilliant and Lyrical
A work of art!
Listen
Buried. Alive.
Beautiful, With a Disappointing Ending

Fugitive Pieces
Anne Michaels
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 067945439X
Release Date: 1997-02-25

Amazon.com

Anne Michaels, an accomplished poet, has already published two collections of poetry in her native Canada. She turns her hand to fiction in an impressive debut novel, Fugitive Pieces. This is the story of Jakob Beer, a Polish Jew, translator, and poet who, as a child, witnessed his family's slaughter at the hands of the Nazis. Beer himself was found and smuggled out of Poland by Athos Roussos, a Greek archaeologist who carried him back to Greece and kept him there in precarious safety. After the war they emigrated together to Canada. Jakob's story is told through diaries discovered by Ben, a young man whose parents are Holocaust survivors and who is a vessel for their memories just as Jakob is the bearer of his own.

Fugitive Pieces is a book about memory and forgetting. How is it possible to love the living when our hearts are still with the dead? What is the difference between what historical fact tells us and what we remember? More than that, the novel is a meditation on the power of language to free our souls and allow us to find our own destinies.

Book Description

This first novel from an award-winning poet -- a #1 best-seller in Canada -- is certain to propel her into the front ranks of our very best practitioners of contemporary fiction.

It is a story of World War II as remembered and imagined by one of its survivors: a poet named Jakob Beer, traumatically orphaned as a young child and smuggled out of Poland, first to a Greek island (where he will return as an adult), and later to Toronto. It is the story of how, over his lifetime, Jakob learns the power of language -- to destroy, to omit, to obliterate, but also to restore and to conjure, witness and tell -- as he comes to understand and experience what was lost to him and of what is possible for him to regain.

Profoundly moving, brilliantly written -- as sensual and lyric as it is emotionally resonant -- Fugitive Pieces delves into the most difficult workings of the human heart and mind: the grief and healing of remembrance. It is a first novel of astonishing achievement.

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant and Lyrical.......2007-10-04

I have to agree with the reviewers who say this is a brilliant piece of work but flawed. It is extremely beautiful writing but I will admit to a certain impatience to finish this book and see where it is going because there's no flesh to the plot, nor are there meat to the characters. I read books about Holocaust survivors to remember the victims and their families, so they won't all remain nameless. It is a big part of our history as well as how it shaped our world today. This is a story about three men in different stages in their lives, how the Germans tried to erase their history, their past, and how they tried to survive in spite of it all. It's just a beautifully written story or stories, as you might say.

There's Athos, a Greek man who found Jakob hiding in the woods and brought him back to Greece with him. Jakob had seen his parents brutually murdered and his sister kidnapped. Ben is the son of two Jewish refugees in Toronto who never knew of his parents' great secrets till after their death. Some of the best pages in this novel are found in these pages ~~ 159-170 (the edition that I am talking of is the first edition) ~~ that is when the suffering of Jakob's people came alive and that is some of the most poignant pieces of work I have yet to read. It is very poetical and descriptive as a man remembers horrorifying scenes from his childhood. This is a man who struggled with survivor's guilt all of his life.

Here are some excerpts in case you need to find it: "The photos capture again and again this chilling moment of choice: the laughter of the damned. When the soldier realized that only death has the power to turn "man" into "figuren," his difficulty was solved. And so the rage and sadism increased: his fury at the victim for suddenly turning human; his desire to destroy that humanness so intense his brutuality has no limit."

"There's a precise moment when we reject contradiction. This moment of choice is the lie we will live by. What is dearest to us is often dearer to us than truth."

And lastly, probably my favorite passage in the entire book: "There were the few, like Athos, who chose to do good at great personal risk; those who never confused objects and humans, who knew the difference between naming and the named. Because the rescuers couldn't lose sight, literally, of the human, again and again they give us the same explanation for their heroism: 'What choice did I have?' "

That is why I give this book a five star. I will admit that there are times when I got impatient with the author's flowing writing style and wish that she would just get to the point. But when she makes her points (scattered throughout the book, mind you), she makes them intensely and skillfully.

This is a different book on the Holocaust, but one that should be read by all serious readers.

10-4-07

A work of art!.......2007-09-10

Fugitive Pieces is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It is clear to me that Anne Michaels is a poet. Nothing needs to be added to the words from Publishers Weekly: Searing the mind with stunning images while seducing with radiant prose, this brilliant first novel is a story of damaged lives and the indestructibility of the human spirit. It speaks about loss, about the urgency, pain and ultimate healing power of memory, and about the redemptive power of love. Brilliant!

Listen.......2007-03-01

Every other 5 star review said it for me. I also listened to the abridged version on tape because the language begged to be heard.. When I finished a portion I listened to only that portion then went back to reading the book. And so on..It was as if I were reading the libretto to an opera. It listens like one long epic poem. I have never read a book like this.

Buried. Alive........2006-05-29

The period in my title is both optional and essential. This rich and evocative book (much more an extended prose poem than a novel) is both about the situation of being buried alive by a traumatic past (the Holocaust), and about a spiritual trajectory that begins in death and ends in transcendent life.

As a child, Jacob Beer buries himself in the ground to escape detection in the Holocaust. He is rescued by a Greek archaeologist, who hides him in occupied Greece and then emigrates with him to Canada. Images of burial and unearthing recur throughout the book, whose theme is less the Holocaust itself than the challenge of coming to terms with the past sufficiently to make a life in the present. In the end, Jacob Beer, now a well-known poet, succeeds triumphantly, and joy in life blossoms out of memories of death. Anne Michaels is a poet herself, and at the beginning her style can seem overwrought for its subject. But she has created a book which, like Sebald's AUSTERLITZ and Thomas' THE WHITE HOTEL, approaches its vast subject obliquely through the non-linear accumulation of images, ultimately achieving a radiance which is all her own.

Other readers have commented on the fact that, three-quarters into the book, when Jacob's narrative ends, another character (Ben) is introduced, whose story has only incidental connections with Jacob's own. It is a risky device, but one that I personally find successful, since it does eventually come to reflect upon Jacob, while at the same time suggesting that his story is not the situation of one unique exception, but more the common experience of all those who have been touched by great trauma and must somehow emerge from its shadow to make new lives.

Beautiful, With a Disappointing Ending.......2006-05-12

Book I of "Fugitive Pieces" (the first 3/4 or so of the novel) was one of the best pieces of writing I have read recently. The author's background in poetry is clear in her writing style. Many of the lines were so beautiful that I read them over several times. The style of writing is such that often the images and feelings inspired by the words are more important than what the words actually say. The story itself, about the life of survivor Jakob Beer and his attempts to hold on to his origins, was moving.
However, Book II took a turn for the worse. Jakob has died suddenly (not a spoiler--a pseudo-news report on the first page of the book warns the reader that this will happen), and a narrator named Ben takes over. Ben has been influenced by Jakob's poetry--he himself is a child of survivors and has had a difficult relationship with his parents. For us to be reading Ben's life story seems strange, out of context, and beside the point. It is Jakob we actually care about, and Ben does little to resolve Jakob's story. I'm not sure what the author was trying to accomplish with such a tangential ending. But I would still recommend "Fugitive Pieces" because of the beauty of the writing, and because it does a fine job portraying the sadness and struggles of Jakob's life during and after the Holocaust.

Average customer rating:

Power and Survival Played Out in Two People's Lives
Harlequinized treatment of grim subject matter
Powerful and mesmerizing
the kommandant's mistress
A fascinating, wrenching and daring novel.

The Kommandant's Mistress: A Novel
Sherri Szeman
Manufacturer: Harpercollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0060170115

Book Description

The Kommandant's Mistress is a mesmerizing and disturbing depiction of sexual obsession and subjugation in a Nazi concentration camp.Szeman hauntingly constructs a kommandant's tiny office where a beautiful young Jewish woman must learn to survive the horrors of her daily servitude.Privy to every secret in the kommandant's heart and life, the woman bears witness to the grotesque reality of the camps, with no choice but to memorize the intimate details of a man fighting a tortured existence of his own.

Customer Reviews:

Power and Survival Played Out in Two People's Lives.......2006-02-04

The Kommandant's Mistress is not a novel for everyone. The setting is an Auschwitz-like Concentration Camp, and the topic is not love, but power and survival. Yet inside this hellish environment, Sherri Szeman wonderfully depicts two people who use each other for survival and whose humanity peaks out from behind their grim roles.

The novel is divided into his story, followed by her story, ending with an obituary-like objective statement of the facts of their lives. Told in a stream of consciousness style that is freed from the constraints of time, the novel is in story fragments from disjointed periods of the characters' lives. The different pieces are hinged together with transition words, phrases, or concepts that strengthen the stream of consciousness feeling.

The author is at her best depicting the lies each person tells themselves to hide from the truth. Both her characters are poets who life has put in a place of unspeakable horror. They are drawn to each other out of survival and, by comparing their stories, the reader is shown how each has twisted the truth to live.

The book ends with an Author's Note that lists a three page bibliography of sources used in the writing. A difficult, but ultimately rewarding and original first novel that is firmly based in the historic period. Szeman succeeds in bringing both characters to life and giving them a voice.

Harlequinized treatment of grim subject matter.......2003-03-28

This, a tale of a Nazi concentration camp commandant and his sexual subjugation of a Jewish inmate, is ultimately nothing more than a cliched romance novel masquerading as middle-brow literature. All the Harlequin cliches are here; Rachel, the Jewish inmate, is not just passably good-looking, she is, as the "official" biography at the end tells us, "a renowned beauty", and her captor is similarly "exceedingly physically attractive". Well, naturally, because there wouldn't be as much melodramatic potential if they were exceedingly non-remarkable individuals, and while one could argue that it was because of her looks that the commandant grew infatuated with her, it still seems to me a little too stock-in-trade when it comes to the stereotypes of cheesy romance novels.

Written in two first person narratives with biographical sketches at the end, the structure is jarring and provides no momentum to the plot, nor any depth to the characters; the reader is ultimately left with many pieces of the puzzle but no key as to how to put them together. Truth be told I haven't read a stylistic mishmash like this with the Holocaust as subject matter since DM Thomas' "White Hotel".

In turns cliched, clumsily written and over-wrought, I'd recommend giving this one a miss. Liliana Cavani did this first and better with her film "The Night Porter", a far more convincing and original portrayal of sexual obsession between a Nazi officer and Jewish concentration camp inmate; I'd also recommend Ka-Tzetnik's novels "House of Dolls" and "Atrocity" for a more viscerally realistic and harrowing view of sex as an instrument of survival during this insane and dark period of history.

Powerful and mesmerizing.......2002-04-09

This is one of the best books I have read. Its structure is remarkable. Think of James Joyce and his stream of consciencousness style but in complete sentences and easy to understand. We get the interior monologues of the major characters as though they are remembering the past, jumping from memory to memory.

The book is a powerful depiction of an unreal time. The marvel of this book is that the Kommandant is not portrayed as all bad and the Mistress is not all victim or all good.

Cool language is the medium for the most distrubing events. It is the substance of what is being said that carries the power, not the use or overuse of bombastic verbage that so often writers use to show us how great their talent is. This book says more with less.

In the end it is the most haunting of books.

the kommandant's mistress.......2001-01-21

As a student of the Holocaust, an interviewer of Holocaust survivors, and a writer/ professor of Holocaust fiction, I cannot recommend Ms. Szeman's book highly enough. Her research is meticulous and the breadth of imagination she uses to flesh out the historical detail for her readers is staggering. Also admirable is the stark prose with which she delineates the most horrific of experiences--perhaps the only way a tale of this sort can be told. And her depiction of von Walther, the Kommandant, is immensely compelling psychological portraiture. ...The kalidoscopic method of narration--juxtaposing and splicing the characters' experiences together in a series of snapshots--has been mentioned by other reviewers; I think it's one of the book's strengths and would be delighted to engage in a dialogue with Ms. Szeman or any of her students as to how/ why she chose this paricular method. I can be contacted at Jenna92@aol.com In any case, for any serious student of writing and/ or the Holocaust, this book is a must.

A fascinating, wrenching and daring novel........2001-01-19

Sherri Szeman, in her novel, "The Kommandant's Mistress," takes one risk after another. She dares to play with time and setting, generally changing scenes and characters in the middle of a page, so that the reader must scramble to keep his bearings. The Kommandant of the title, Max von Walther, professes to despise Jews, and he kills them without compunction. Yet, he boldly takes a beautiful Jewish deportee into his office and his life, in spite of the protests of his furious wife. Szeman tells her story from various points of view, first from the viewpoint of the Kommandant, then from the viewpoint of his mistress, and finally from the "official viewpoint". Another daring move is Szeman's presentation of often horrifying events without much embellishment. She depicts the situtations as a series of snapshots, one after another, quickly and relentlessly. For example, Szeman depicts the Kommandant's daughter, Ilse, repeating the vicious Jew-hating comments that she hears from her elders, each word coming out like a horrible profanity from the mouth of an innocent child. In another scene, the Kommandant implores his mistress to take his gun and help him to commit suicide. Will she pull the trigger? The effect of this staccato narrative style is similar to a punch in the stomach. It is traumatizing to contemplate constantly changing scenarios of deportations, physical and mental torture, and murder. Szeman seems to be saying that there is no way to tell such a story in a linear way. Only by being cryptic and non-linear can one begin to capture the emotional trauma of events that are not within the scope of most people's experience. Szeman is a poet, as well as a novelist, and her novel at times approaches poetry in its tremendous emotional impact. I highly recommend this book to readers who are interested in Holocaust literature that is challenging and thought-provoking.

Average customer rating:

a GREAT performance piece, Unbelieveable
Morality and History
Haunting and wonderful
The Voice of a Lifetime
Wonderful First Novel....

Bring Us the Old People: A Novel
Marisa Kantor Stark
Manufacturer: Coffee House Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1566890748

Book Description

Fiction. Holocast Studies. The guilt of a terrible decision haunts this vivid portrayal of one woman's life, which invokes turn-of-the-century rural Poland, post-war New York, and a present day nursing home. "The most impressive aspect of the novel ... is Maime's voice and how beautifully consistent it is ... It is the voice of the modern world, its horrors and triumphs ... of one who has seen the worst that humanity is capable of ... and has lived to tell the tale" -- Russell Banks. "Stark's lonely heroine becomes an unforgettable figure as she sums up a life endured with stoic dignity" -- Publisher's Weekly. Marisa Kantor Stark received her B.A. from Princeton in 1995 and her M.A. from Boston University in 1998. BRING US THE OLD PEOPLE is her first novel.

Customer Reviews:

a GREAT performance piece, Unbelieveable.......2003-07-11

From the moment I read the opening sentances of this book I was hooked in. Maime pulled me into her reality in a way that very few characters ever have. I had been looking for a piece to do for Dramatic Interpretation in speech/debate when I came across it.

Marisa Kantor Stark did a wonderful job on this novel. And with this performance peice I won the position of 1st Alternate to the National Tournament from my state.

Truly, I have come to love Maime. I especially like the parts where she would flashback to a time in her past. There were so many themes in this book it was hard to cut some of them to make the 10 minute time limit.

Now, as a person who has memorized pieces of this novel by heart, I reccomend to the book not just as an award winning performance piece, but as a wonderful read.

Pick it up! Stark will not disappoint you.

Morality and History.......2000-07-02

An excellent novel that represents the reality of moral questions that faced so many during the Holocaust. Maimie's actions seem so easy to condemn at times and yet so disturbing to the reader who is forced to asked themselves about their own actions during such circumstances. Stark's use of flashbacks to tell the story is first rate. A thought provoking read.

Haunting and wonderful.......2000-06-13

As the grandson of Jewish, Polish Holocaust survivors who has spent countless hours listening to tales of fear and sorrow relating to both war-time and post-war life, I related very well to the themes and main character in Stark's book. I found the book to be very well-written and enjoyed it immensely. I look forward to Stark's next work - regardless of the subject matter. Congratulations on an excellent debut novel!

The Voice of a Lifetime.......2000-06-02

While there are so many positive things that I can say about this book, I feel that I must emphasize the narrator's voice. Maime's voice is powerful and resonant, converting her from a character in a novel to a real person with real hopes and dreams and very real shortcomings. It is this overwhelming sense of reality that sets this novel apart from others of its genre. I sincerely hope that Ms. Stark will continue to create characters that are capable of generating the emotional pull of Maime.

Wonderful First Novel...........2000-06-01

This novel is an intriguing account of an elderly woman's experiences in World War II. The author captures the character of Mamie perfectly, bringing her to life in every respect. I loved the book; once I started it I couldn't put it down! I would definitely recommend it to any reader.....

Average customer rating:

A Jewish woman's struggle to survive in Poland during WW II.
The Human Spirit
Curling Up with a Good Read
A Wonderful Read

The Chimney Tree
Helaine G. Helmreich
Manufacturer: University Press of Colorado
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0870815628

Book Description

The eldest daughter of the Rabbi of Dubnitz had always been a little different. Not satisfied with the mundane expectations of her friends, she refuses the suitors she is offered by her family. Yet Miriam's daring draws her down forbidden paths; when a romantic liaison with a young Christian peasant is discovered, she is quickly married to a man from another town and sent away. His cruelty and madness send her fleeing to Warsaw, where she finds the love she has been looking for. Centered finally, with a new, loving husband, a flourishing business, and a beloved child, Miriam makes peace with her parents and begins life anew, but when the distant rumbles of Nazism become the roaring maelstrom of World War II, she is faced with the loss of everything she holds dear. Separated from her husband and son, can she possibly survive a world gone mad to find them again?

Customer Reviews:

A Jewish woman's struggle to survive in Poland during WW II........2001-06-03

Breindel Rutner, the heroine of "The Chimney Tree," is a beautiful young woman who seems destined for happiness. She is the daughter of Reb Mordche Rutner, the respected head of the Hasidim in the town of Krovnitz, Poland, during the 1930's. Breindel is a member of a warm and loving family and she has everything that she desires. Unfortunately, her life takes a wrong turn early on. Breindel falls in love with a gentile, and when the relationship becomes public, she is hastily married off to a man she does not love. Unfortunately, her new husband suffers from Messianic delusions, and she must flee from him to keep her own sanity. Breindel's problems escalate throughout the book. Besides having to flee from place to place to escape bad relationships, Breindel suffers horribly during WWII. The Nazis bring death and destruction to Polish Jewry. Many members of Breindel's family die, and she must use her ingenuity to keep herself and her child alive from day to day. The author of this novel, Helaine Helmreich, has created a strong and spirited heroine who evoked my sympathy and interest. "The Chimney Tree" is a sad story of a woman whose life turns out to be far less idyllic than she could ever have imagined.

The Human Spirit.......2000-05-08

The Chimney Tree is an engrossing book that I read in just one day. I had to keep reminding myself that it was fiction rather than fact.

The character, Breindel, illustrates the magnificent strength of the human spirit. One just marvels at her will to go on and prays for her survival.

Curling Up with a Good Read.......2000-04-16

This book is what people mean when they talk about "curling up with a good read". A generational novel that follows a Jewish girl(Breindal) from an innocent affair with a boy who turns out to be far more than he seems, through the horrors of Nazi and Communist terror. Breindal is a great character who combines an emotional response to her fascinating life coupled with a wisdom and insight that keeps you reading chapter after chapter. When you next need a terrific book for the beach on a sunny day or for staying in on a chilly autumn night, there's no better or more addictive read.

A Wonderful Read.......2000-04-15

What a wonderful read this is. I'd call it a great page-turner--which it is--but that would leave unmentioned it's lovely style. The book offers a spellbinding story elegantly told.

You'll feel you'll know Breindal as she encounters a world that is going through massive changes and her own journey from innocence to a wisdom forged from young love and the threat of extermination.

But, above all, it is the fascinating story that explains why I, and three of my friends, each read this entire book in one sitting. You just can't put it down and are sorry that I has to end.

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