The Gustav Sonata, by Rose Tremain

The Gustav Sonata, by Rose Tremain (2016)

 Gustav Perle grew up in poverty in Switzerland in the years at the end of World War II.  His father died when he was too young to have any clear memory of him and is mother, whom he adores, is distant and bitter.  In kindergarten, Gustav befriends Anton Zweibel, a boy his same age, who is a promising musician.

 The novel is written in three parts.  In Part One, Gustav and Anton are young boys who are constant companions.  Anton’s family, who are wealthy, take Gustav on vacations with them.  Emilie, Gustav’s mother is not keen on Anton and his family because they are Jewish.  She is bitter because she blames her husband’s death on saving Jews during the War.

 Part Two focuses on Emilie and her early life and how she fell in love with Erich Perle.  Erich was an Assistant Police Officer.  In his position, he helped Jewish refugees into Switzerland after the country had closed its doors.  When his actions were discovered, he lost his job and was reduced to finding a menial job with poor pay.  Although Emilie loved Erich and called referred to him as a hero, she could never forgive him for plunging the family into poverty.

 Gustav and Anton are middle-aged in Part Three.  After having been separated for years, each with his own life, the two friends come together again.  The bond they formed as children remained strong.

 This was a beautifully written novel.

5 Stars

Read:  May 28, 2021

 

The Book of Lost Names, by Kristin Harmel

The Book of Lost Names, by Kristin Harmel (2020)

 

The premise of this book is interesting.  It is about forgers during World War II who created false documents to save French Jews during World War II.  Instead, the book reads like a young adult sanitized version of Nazi-occupied France.

 

Eva Traube is a 20-something young woman who lives in Paris with her parents.  Although Eva was born in France, her parents are Polish immigrants.  As the Nazi’s begin rounding up Jews, her father is arrested, but Eva and her mother escape to a small town in southern France’s “Free Zone.”  Apparently, Eva had some talent as a budding artist, thus, created some forged documents that aided in their escape.

 

Soon she become involved in an underground resistance group and begins forging documents to help young Jewish children escape into Switzerland.  Although the dialogue is stilted and unrealistic (she asks questions that, as a Jew, she should have known), she does realize that by creating new identities for these children, she is, in effect, erasing their past.  This bothers her, and she wonders how these children will be able to reunite with their parents after the war.

 

One of her collaborators in drafting forged documents is Rémy, a young Catholic.  Together, they devised an elaborate code to identify the children with both their real names and their forged names.  Eva and Rémy record these coded names in an old obscure religious text found the parish church’s library.

 

While Eva is working on these documents with Rémy, they form a budding romance.  Her mother, however, frets about this relationship because Rémy is not Jewish.  Her mother sits around and broods about her missing husband and accuses Eva of abandoning her faith.

 

As the War continues, Eva becomes involved in activities that stretch the imagination, especially considering that she appears as being very naïve.

 

This was a very quick read, and something that I could see myself enjoying when I was about 12 years old.  The characters were not fully developed and the book did not depict the actual horrors and fears of living in France during the Nazi occupation.

Read: March 23, 2021

3 Stars 

ExUs, by Josephus IV

ExUs, by Josephus IV (2014)

 This is a cautionary tale of what could happen.  The book was written in 2014, but the events happened in the “future”, which was shortly after 2017.  The United States Congress enacted the Victims Law of 2017, which ostensibly gave an advantage to minorities.  Its impact, however, largely targeted Jews.  As more and more restrictions were placed on American Jews, they found themselves without jobs, property and the ability to travel.  Technology had advanced so that a mere pinprick could determine one’s ethnic status.  People who never knew they were Jewish but had one Jewish grandparent were suddenly ostracized.

 The novel is narrated by a young computer hacker.  He was offered a job sponsored by the NSA that was designed to build security walls within that agency.  He was given high clearance, so was also able to view extensive files, where he realized that the government was backing an Exodus of Jews from the United States.

 This is a very fast read, but has a lot of food for thought.

Read: January 27, 2021

4 Stars

The Jew Store, by Stella Suberman

 The Jew Store, by Stella Suberman (1998)

 

This book is part-memoir, part-fiction.  The author her family’s life in a small rural Tennessee town where they were the only Jews.  She changed the name of the town and the names of some of the townspeople to protect their identities. Since much of the story occurred either before she was born, or before she was old enough to have a clear memory, had a clear memory, much is of the book is based on her imagination as to what actually happened.  The family lived in Tennessee from 1920 until 1933.  The author was barely 11 when her family moved away.

 

That said, this family memoir is probably not unlike the story of many Jews living in the rural south.  As she notes, many small southern towns had “Jew” stores – dry-goods stores run and operated by the town’s only Jews. 

 

Aaron and Rebe Bronson had both immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe/Russia.  Aaron was a self-described natural born salesman.  He set off for Nashville, Tennessee, where he had hoped to make his fortune.  He soon discovered that there were already many Jewish-run stores there; and was convinced to move to the small town of Concordia.  He and his young family arrived in Concordia in 1920 and were taken in by Miss Brookie, an eccentric agnostic who believed in being kind to others.

 

While Miss Brookie was understanding, none of the other townspeople had ever seen Jews before and were convinced they were a different species.  On the eve of the new store opening, Miss Brookie tells him that it will go well, provided the Klan approves.  The book goes into detail of the tensions between the towns people and the Bronson’s fears of anti-Semitism.  The book also describes the tensions between the white and Black population, often in terms that are very disarming.

 

Aaron named his store “Bronson’s Low-Priced Store”.  Once the store is open, however, most of the town comes to respect the Bronson’s.  Reba, however, fears for her children and wants them to grow up in a Jewish environment.  When the Depression came, Aaron fought to keep the town going, thereby winning the respect of most of the town.

 

I found this to be a charming story filled with humor.

 

Read:  January 23, 2021

 

4 Stars

 

In Our Hearts We Were Giants, by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev

In Our Hearts We Were Giants: The Remarkable Story of the Lilliput Troupe ~ A Dwarf Family’s Survival of the Holocaust, by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev (2004)

 

This book is about the Ovitz family, a Jewish family from Transylvania.  In 1868, the patriarch of the family, Shimshon Eizik Ovitz.  He was born to normal-sized parents; however, he acquired a mutant gene, which made him a dwarf.  He married and his wife, who was of normal height, gave birth to two daughters, both of whom were also dwarfs.  Shortly after his wife died, Shimshon remarried a young woman, only a few years older than his oldest daughter.  Soon, their family grew.  Of Shimshon’s 10 children, seven were dwarfs.  The oldest child, Rozika, was born in 1886; the youngest, Perla, in 1921.

 

The family stuck together, with the normal-sized sibling caring for the other seven.  They built their own vaudeville troupe, known as the Lilliput Troupe, and entertained neighboring villages and cities with music, skits, jokes and other entertainment.  This made them well known and afforded them a means to survive.

 

Then the Holocaust came to their part of Transylvania.  All Jews of the area were transported to concentration camps.  The Ovitz family (minus one brother) were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.  The novelty of having seven little people in one family caught the eye of Joseph Mengele, and they were spared, along with their 3 normal-sized sibling.  They also convinced Mengele that several other townspeople were also family members.

 

This gave Mengele an opportunity to “experiment” on the entire extended family.  In exchange, the family was afforded certain “luxuries” not afforded the other prisoners.  They all lived in fear, however, never knowing what atrocities would be committed to their bodies.  Amazingly, despite the torture inflicted upon them, all of the members of the extended “family” survived the Holocaust.  They ultimately were able to immigrate to Israel, where they spent their remaining lives.

 

This is an important story and provides insight into the human experimentation conducted in the camps.  The book, however, jumps around too much, which interrupts the flow of the story.

 

Read:  January 21, 2021

 

3.5 Stars

 

 

 

 

 

Not Our Kind: A Novel

Not Our Kind, by Kitty Zeldis (2018)

Not Our Kind is a novel set in the late 1940s in New York City.  Young Eleanor Markowitz was in between jobs when the cab she literally bumped into Patricia Bellamy (their cabs crashed).  Eleanor had left her teaching job and was running late for an interview when the accident happened.  As fate would have it, Patricia had a 13-year old daughter, Margaux, who was recovering from polio and had just lost her tutor.  Margaux formed an instant bond with Eleanor.  Despite her misgivings, wealthy and WASPy Patricia decided to hire Eleanor, provided her friends don’t learn that Eleanor is Jewish.

The book started out with a bang, but lost steam as I continued reading.  I thought it was too cliche.  I got a feel for Eleanor and Margaux, but the other characters were too flat.  Eleanor met and was attracted to Tom, Patricia’s brother.  He was a rich playboy who had seduced at least one of Patricia’s friends in the past.  He still had a bohemian-life style.  What did Eleanor see in Tom?  The anti-Semitism was not really a main theme, other than making a point that Eleanor had to change her name from Moskowitz to Moss to get a job.  Neither she nor her mother, a hat maker, were especially observant.  Eleanor had, however, observed some of the Jewish rituals when her father was alive.  She had no problems eating shellfish and lobster in the beginning of the book, but later the point was made when treyfe was served at a party.  It was a fast and easy read, but not memorable.

Read:  December 9, 2020

3 Stars

The Lost Letter

The Lost Letter, by Jillian Cantor (2017)

This Holocaust novel alternates between Austria in 1938 and 1989 Los Angeles.  

 

In 1938, young Kristoff, an orphan who had no family life, finds himself an apprentice to Frederick Faber, a Jewish engraver who specialized in making stamps.  Faber was a famous for his engraved stamps.  As an apprentice, Kristoff lives and dines with the family.  Although not a Jew himself, he finds himself attracted to the Shabbat rituals and prayers.  He also has a crush on Faber’s 17-year-old daughter, Elena.

 

In Los Angeles in 1989, Kate Nelson is struggling through a painful divorce and a father suffering from dementia.  She has just placed her father in a nursing home and is going through his belongings.  He had been a stamp collector and Kate had wonderful memories as a child going with her father as he sought out his “gems”.  She takes his stamp collection to be appraised, thinking that there might be something of value that can be sold to help defray the costs of his medical care.

 

She takes the stamps to Benjamin Grossman, a philatelist, for his appraisal.  He discovered among the collection an unopened letter with a unique Austrian stamp.  It was the picture of an Austrian church with a small unauthorized edelweiss on its steeple.  The letter was addressed to one of Faber’s daughters, and the stamp appears to have been a Faber design, but seemed to have been issued after his apparent death.

 

Still thinking that the stamp might be of value, Benjamin and Kate locate Fraulein Faber in hopes of discovering the mystery of the edelweiss on the stamp.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.

 

Read:  October. 27, 2020

 

4.5 Stars