Queer history and Holocaust history converge in this remarkable account.
A “passionate friendship” shared by two women imprisoned in a concentration camp.
Grete Buber-Neumann, a German communist, was sent to Ravensbrück, the concentration camp for women, in 1940. Milena Jesenská, from a wealthy family in Prague, arrived two months later. The camp's inmates were organized in a caste system, with so-called “asocials”—prostitutes, lesbians, Roma—at the bottom. But as relatively privileged prisoners—Grete a “block elder,” Milena an office secretary—both had a “clear view of the sinister Nazi machinations” afoot. Strauss knows that her subjects would not have identified as lesbians, but their loving relationship was nonetheless instrumental in “defeating the unbearable reality” of a wretched life in a slave-labor turned death camp. Their lives are well explored. Milena, a political journalist who played an important part in the Czech resistance to Nazi occupation, was an intimate of and correspondent with Franz Kafka and is now acknowledged as his first translator. Grete, a survivor of the Soviet gulag, wrote the postwar memoir Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler (1948), “compelled by her promise to Milena to ‘bear witness to the tragedy of my generation.’” Milena died at Ravensbrück in 1944; Greta was released in 1945 and died in 1989. All of the camp's records were burned up before its liberation by the Red Army, so the lives of these two brave women have been all but “erased from history.” But Strauss’ research into and reimagining of their four years together amount to an essential rediscovery of this history. Her work is as alert to the tenderness of their connection as to the immense evil of their surroundings.
Queer history and Holocaust history converge in this remarkable account.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2025
ISBN: 9781250285744
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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SEEN & HEARD
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