This serious effort to evoke the crucible of German fascism proves less effective at conveying emotional resonance.
The perspectives of perpetrators, victim, and bystanders evoke the horrors of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Noted New Zealand author Chidgey’s latest is a lengthy, well-researched addition to the already sizable shelf of Holocaust fiction. Dr. Lenard Weber is a Mischling, only part Jewish, but he ends up at Buchenwald, having been summoned there by Sturmbannführer Dietrich Hahn. Hahn’s role at the camp is administrative officer—overseeing budgets, plumbing, etc. The inmates are less than human to him but not so his wife, Greta, with whom he lives in a luxury villa. When Greta develops ovarian cancer, Dietrich will try any medical resource, which leads him to Weber, inventor of the Sympathetic Vitaliser, a machine designed to destroy cancerous tumors. Weber narrates his story in 1946, via letters written to his daughter, who's in the Theresienstadt ghetto; Dietrich’s account dates from the 1950s; Greta's "imaginary diary" takes her from 1943 to 1945; and a fourth narrative voice emanates from 1,000 citizens of Weimar, whose awareness of the vast camp nearby is filtered through propaganda, self-interest, and delusion. Packed with precise details about the camp, German culture, the Nazi machine, and much more, the novel offers a sober reflection on a country seized by dehumanizing insanity, corrupted by lies and cruelty. Yet the characterization is predictable, especially when it comes to Dietrich, a familiar blend of Aryan orderliness, contempt, and deception. Greta senses the abyss on her doorstep but averts her eyes. Weber is a sympathetic lens through which the worst of the suffering may be glimpsed. And the Weimar citizens embody denial, disgust, and disbelief. As the war wraps up, deliverance for one survivor contrasts with guiltless acceptance by the German community.
This serious effort to evoke the crucible of German fascism proves less effective at conveying emotional resonance.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-60945-627-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
This propulsive thriller twists into the dark and bloody underbelly of the world of fine art.
The discovery that a revered artist’s sculpture contains a human bone sets off scandal and violence.
Art historian James Becker has what seems like a sweet deal. He’s the curator of the collection of the Fairburn Foundation, housed at a stately home owned by the Lennox family: Sebastian, Becker’s best friend, and his bitter mother, Lady Emmeline. Becker’s wife, Helena, was Sebastian’s fiancee first, but they’re all very civilized about it and happily awaiting the birth of her baby. The centerpiece of the Fairburn collection is works by the late Vanessa Chapman, an artist about whom Becker wrote his thesis, and with whom he is somewhat obsessed. Partly, it’s because of her great talent, but she was also a glamorous figure, a beauty who, as she became successful, sequestered herself on an isolated Scottish tidal island called Eris. She had a dark side—lots of stormy relationships, plus a philandering mooch of a husband who vanished without a trace a few decades ago. Her reputation, though, has risen after her death—so much so that the Fairburn has loaned some of her works to the Tate Modern. That’s where a forensic anthropologist sees one of her sculptures, made of found objects that include what’s described as an animal bone. The scientist is sure the bone is human, and soon Becker finds himself scrambling to prevent scandal. Vanessa willed her works and papers to the foundation, but some of them are still on Eris, guarded by her longtime friend Grace Haswell. A retired doctor, Grace lived with Vanessa off and on over the years and nursed her through her fatal cancer. It was a surprise when Vanessa left her estate not to Grace but to Douglas Lennox, Emmeline’s husband and Sebastian’s father. Douglas was Vanessa’s gallerist and lover, but the two had a nasty falling-out. Sebastian is so frustrated by Grace’s refusal to turn over all of the bequest that he’s ready to sue her, but Becker believes he can negotiate, so off to the the island he goes. He finds far more treachery and shocking secrets than he expected, past and present alike. Hawkins keeps her cast tight, her wild setting ominous, and her plot moving fast.
This propulsive thriller twists into the dark and bloody underbelly of the world of fine art.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9780063396524
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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