A work that weaves art and history into a fascinating tale.
This historical novel depicts a few hours and many memories in the life of a Jewish art dealer.
Ludwig Pollak, an Austrian antiquities dealer and museum director in Rome, gained fame in the art world in 1906 for finding the missing right arm of the father figure in the classical sculpture Laocoön and His Sons, which stands in the Vatican Museums. In his fictional debut, von Trotha, a German historian and former book-publishing executive, imagines an encounter on Oct. 17, 1943, between a Vatican emissary identified only as K. and Pollak at the latter’s Rome apartment. K., who narrates the meeting, has been sent to offer Pollak and his family sanctuary in Vatican City because the Nazis will soon start rounding up Jews in the city. But K. is frustrated in his efforts, as Pollak, who is 75, uses the occasion to reminisce about catalogs he has written, collectors he has dealt with, and the turns his life has taken amid the growing pressures of antisemitism. His monologues are occasionally interrupted by the intrigued but increasingly nervous K., who has a car waiting outside and knows they should get going before curfew. The novel resembles a one-act play with two main performers and other figures made present by allusion and eloquence. Here they include Pollak’s memories of Rodin, Richard Strauss, and J.P. Morgan, among others, and his admiration of Goethe, who wrote an essay on the Laocoön group. The old man can sound proud, pompous, erudite, aloof, but he isn’t indulging in nostalgia for his greatest hits. He feels compelled to give a personal account of his life, regarding this as a duty more important than fleeing ahead of the Nazi roundup. Von Trotha had access to Pollak’s diaries, letters, and archival material, and he benefits from a smooth translation by Lauffer. He achieves much in this slim book, capturing a life enriched by its commitment to art and antiquities and a man who makes an unusual decision when faced with a crucial choice.
A work that weaves art and history into a fascinating tale.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-954404-00-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: New Vessel Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: today
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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