A melancholy yet life-affirming story from the ashes of the Holocaust.
Pradelski debuts with a novel that makes flesh and blood of the Jewish citizens of pre–World War II Bedzin, Silesia
The novel opens in the present day as Tsippy Silberberg decides to fly to Tel Aviv to collect an odd inheritance: An aunt has left her silverware stored in a worn suitcase. Tsippy’s life is fractured. A disturbing childhood haunts her, and now she feels compulsion to eat only food in its frozen state. She’s a curious girl, though, and wants to marry. Perhaps, she thinks, there’s a suitable husband to be found in Israel, and so she flies there. Pradelski slowly reveals Tsippy as the narrative unfolds, but the eponymous Bella Kugelman arrives as a powerful, original character, a woman who witnessed all that disappeared beneath Nazi nihilism. As Tsippy arrives at her hotel, she finds Bella waiting, seeking someone to listen to the stories of the past, of the town of Bedzin and its passionate, vibrant people. Says Bella: "Don’t run away. I have to talk to you or else my town will die." Among those remembered is sly Gonna, escaping to Palestine only days before the Nazi invasion, forever pursued by guilt over all those left behind to die. There is allegorical treasure to be found in Bella’s remembrance of the people of Bedzin and of life haunted by all that was lost.
A melancholy yet life-affirming story from the ashes of the Holocaust.Pub Date: July 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8212-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
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
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