Dense and deeply moving.
The quest for a sense of belonging motivates a first-generation Jewish American exploring his roots in post-WWII Austria.
Max Berman emigrates from the Austrian village of H in 1928 when he is almost five. His mother, Mira, who never adjusts to America, keeps alive his memory of the gracious home and European bourgeois lifestyle they left behind. As a young soldier in Europe in 1945, Max briefly visits the house in H now occupied by strangers (the Austrian relatives who lived there all died in the Holocaust). A successful, free-wheeling bachelor, Max puts off visiting H again until Mira’s death. Now 50 years old, he returns to Austria to reclaim the house. After months of legal maneuvers, he gains ownership, then returns to New York since he can’t take occupancy until the rent-control tenants die. While in H, Max becomes involved in the small Jewish community of returned survivors. Their leader, Spitzer, is a private, almost saintly man who accepts the local Austrians’ arrogance and defensiveness. Through Spitzer, Max has met Nadja, a young woman who wants to be Jewish. He brings her to America to be educated. She falls in love with him but he breaks off their affair and she must find her way in America alone. Eighteen years pass before the last tenants in H die. Max, almost 70, returns to renovate the house. He rekindles his friendship with Spitzer and begins to write a chronicle of the Jews of H, an indictment of their mistreatment by Christian Austrians through the centuries. Upon Spitzer’s death, Nadja visits H. Max realizes he does love her—but it’s too late. He returns to New York, where he can be himself without the weight of history. Austrian-born Mitgutsch (Lover, Traitor, 1997) writes with a passionate anger that can be discomforting, but her characters’ complex humanity is riveting.
Dense and deeply moving.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2006
ISBN: 1-59051-188-3
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This first novel, ostensibly about the friendship between two boys, Reuven and Danny, from the time when they are fourteen on opposing yeshiva ball clubs, is actually a gently didactic differentiation between two aspects of the Jewish faith, the Hasidic and the Orthodox. Primarily the Hasidic, the little known mystics with their beards, earlocks and stringently reclusive way of life. According to Reuven's father who is a Zionist, an activist, they are fanatics; according to Danny's, other Jews are apostates and Zionists "goyim." The schisms here are reflected through discussions, between fathers and sons, and through the separation imposed on the two boys for two years which still does not affect their lasting friendship or enduring hopes: Danny goes on to become a psychiatrist refusing his inherited position of "tzaddik"; Reuven a rabbi.... The explanation, in fact exegesis, of Jewish culture and learning, of the special dedication of the Hasidic with its emphasis on mind and soul, is done in sufficiently facile form to engage one's interest and sentiment. The publishers however see a much wider audience for The Chosen. If they "rub their tzitzis for good luck,"—perhaps—although we doubt it.
Pub Date: April 28, 1967
ISBN: 0449911543
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1967
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