An engrossing tale with heart-rending details of its subject’s difficult life at each trying stage.
The Holocaust–era tale of an orphan girl who escaped the Nazi terror via a succession of Jewish families and relatives in Israel and America.
Jakob is a relative of Elida Friedman, born in 1943 in the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania. Soon after her birth, Elida’s parents, Jonah and Tzila Friedman, were murdered by the Nazis. In what she describes as a “biographical novel,” the author reconstructs Elida’s story, basing the narrative on a wide variety of sources, including “documents, certificates, court records, drawings, and letters in Elida’s handwriting.” Though Jews were forbidden from giving birth in Kovno, the Friedmans resisted the ban, giving the girl a name that means “nonbirth” in Hebrew. Desperate to save her, they engineered a scheme to have her smuggled out by a Christian Lithuanian family to their farm in Kelmuciai, hoping that Jonah’s cousin Lazar could retrieve the girl after the war. Elida became “Rita,” and she was well loved and taken care of. Following the war, she was adopted by a Jewish refugee couple from Russia who settled in Vilna. For years, growing up in the working-class Ruhin home as their only daughter, attending Russian schools, Elida gradually came to understand that they were withholding the truth about her past and that Lazar had been searching for her. Though she was sent to Israel to meet her remaining family, there was still no fixed home for her until Lazar and his wife took her to Texas and adopted her. A determined student with a gift for languages, Elida was often confused and angry, and Jakob depicts her as headstrong, precocious, and not always sympathetic. Nonetheless, Elida’s story is miraculous, and this subjective narrative of her life captures it effectively.
An engrossing tale with heart-rending details of its subject’s difficult life at each trying stage.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780063296657
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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