A patiently recounted narrative, especially informative about Nazi atrocities in Ukraine.
The inspiring story of a Ukrainian Jewish girl trained as a pianist who performed for the Nazis to avoid capture.
The author’s mother, Zhanna Arshanskaya, did not discuss her plight with her son when he was a child living in “blissful ignorance” with his musician-teacher parents in Bloomington, Ind. Seasoned journalist Dawson, now a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, re-creates the terrifying war era by furnishing brief first-person memories in the voice of his mother that alternate with the main historical narrative, which begins with Zhanna and her younger sister, Frina, learning to play the piano at the behest of their father, Dmitri, a candy maker and violinist. As the sisters’ progressed in their musical studies, the family moved to Kharkov so that the girls could attend the city’s prestigious conservatory. But in 1941, when Zhanna was 14, “the German army moved inexorably, and murderously, across the Ukraine.” As Zhanna’s family was marching toward the killing ravines, Dmitri urged his daughter to flee: “I don’t care what you do, just live. Go!” After escaping into the countryside, Zhanna was eventually reunited with her sister. The young girls relied on strangers’ kindness and were coached to reinvent identities for themselves until their piano-playing in an orphanage caught the attention of the music school. They played for the German soldiers and then were sent as a troupe of performers to Berlin and—in a sick twist—on tour to slave-labor camps. Eventually the sisters’ musical gifts earned them passage to America and enormous later achievement, as Dawson gracefully sums up.
A patiently recounted narrative, especially informative about Nazi atrocities in Ukraine.Pub Date: July 15, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-60598-045-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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