Recent Reviews
Suddenly, Love by Aharon Appelfeld
In this beautiful novel by Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld, we experience the pain, suffering and hopefully calm that can come with self-discovery. Apppelfeld’s wisdom permeates this story as we witness the psychological shifts that can occur in a person whose early life choice inflicted suffering on those he loved. Appelfeld’s sparse and elegant prose gives us a window into the hearts of two tormented souls.
Ernst is a seventy-year-old Red Army veteran who was born in Ukraine and now lives in Israel. A former investment advisor, he spends his days writing unpublished novels. Ernst searches for words that will explain to himself his youthful choices that caused his parents, wife and daughter pain. While he was betraying his fellow Jews and fighting for the communists in Russia, his family perished in the Holocaust. When he was a young man, “The thought that he was freeing people from the prison of religion-inspired him to act.”
Each day he writes and each day, he throws work in the garbage.
But since Ernst’s operation two years ago, Irena, his 32- year old caretaker, comes to his small apartment every day. Initially, she assists him with his physical needs, but as time passes, she becomes his confidant and confessor. The ghosts of WWII haunt her life too. Her parents were in concentration camps and Irena was born in a German displaced person camp. She and her parents immigrated to Israel, where Irena still lives in her family’s apartment. Since her parents passed away, Irena continues to set the table for three on the Sabbath and other Jewish Holidays. In dreams and memories, she talks with her parents and they communicate with her. Though uneducated, Irena draws on a well of deep spirituality and believes that “life is a continuum that extends into the unknown.”
But Ernst’s family has no presence in his life. He has not been able to dream or even remember them. He has repressed his early years. Due to Irena’s love and loyalty, Ernst’s parents and grandparents return to Ernst’s memory. He stops throwing his writing in the trash. “Irena’s presence, her closeness, opens corridors for him to worlds he never knew.” Soon, he remembers tender times he spent as a young boy in the Caspian mountains with his wise and devout grandparents. He remembers how his grandfather, an observant Jew, taught him to appreciate the rituals and reverence for G-d. All of which he forgot or repressed when he became a Communist.
Though I believe therapy might have been more productive for Ernst than the slow, plodding process of writing, especially at the dawn of his life. However, Appelfeld’s, Suddenly Love, celebrates the power of human connection and the power of writing to heal.
The Train to Warsaw by Gwen Edelman
Gwen Edelman’s 2014 novel The Train to Warsaw is a compelling story about a couple who physically escaped the horrors of the Holocaust but still carry the trauma of being imprisoned in the Jewish Ghetto. The novel is an elegy to Warsaw, their once beloved city. A city whose citizens inexplicably betrayed their Jewish neighbors.
Jascha and Lilka are returning to Warsaw forty years after the end of WWII. It is December, the dead of winter. Jascha has been invited to speak about his acclaimed wartime novel, The Way Down. He mocks the invitation, “First, they want me dead. Now I’m a native son, an esteemed Polish writer.” His lover, Lilka, pleads with him to accept the invitation. She wants to return to the beloved Warsaw of her childhood. As Jascha predicted, they arrive in a Warsaw that no longer resembles the pre-War city from which they escaped. The War ravaged the town, and the Communists are now in charge.
The novel takes place over three days. When they arrive in Warsaw, they are on edge. They flinch when they see a dog. They recoil when they see the police. They wince when people ask them their background. They can’t forget the savagery perpetrated against Jews after Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939. While in the ghetto, Jascha and Lilka had begun a romance. In the chaos, they each escaped separately by taking on non-Jewish identities. Seven years after the War, they reunite by chance in London. And though they find each other, they are hardened, distant and damaged. Why wouldn’t they be? They lost so much and feel guilty for surviving.
During their brief stay in Warsaw, they share previously unshared stories about their lives before the War and the gruesome tales of their parents’ deaths. At the literary event when Jascha begins reading from his novel, something surprising occurs. It seems the Poles do not want to hear about their disloyalty to their Jewish neighbors.
Gwen Edelman’s sparse and haunting prose powers this novel. Through the use of compelling dialogue, she captures the complicated nuances of memory, betrayal and the complexity of moving forward after trauma. Her gripping novel succinctly depicts the confusion, rage and existential pain that Jascha and Lilka felt upon their return to Warsaw. And due to Edelman’s impressive skills, we feel that anguish as well.
a land more kind than home by Wiley Cash
When Wiley Cash published his debut novel a land more kind than home in 2012, he received an abundance of praise. I can see why. Filled with Biblical themes of courage and faith - revenge and redemption, the novel is intelligent and immersive. Wiley’s beautifully writing shows his deep appreciation for North Carolina language and dialect. He transports us to the town of Marshall, a rural community in the western part of the state. Wiley’s characters are submerged in the area’s traditions and insulated from the wider world. It is a gripping and tragic tale about the power of nefarious religious leaders to influence ethical people into making horrifying choices.
Jess Hall is one of three narrators and the hero of the story. At nine-years-old, he is an observant and intelligent boy who loves his thirteen-year-old brother, Christopher. Jess feels protective of his mute brother, whom everyone calls Stump. His brother makes sense to him. It is the adults who are confusing and puzzling as Jess observes the dissonance between their words and their actions
The villain of the story is Carson Chambliss, the pastor of River Road Church of Christ on the outskirts of Marshall. With verbal dexterity, he convinces the hard-working congregants that it is safe to challenge the will of God. Using snakes and fire, he shames them into testing their faith. Many get burned and poisoned. But still, they return.
Miss Adelaide Lyle is a congregant, a mid-wife, and the second narrator. She knows of the evil that has occurred in the church and yet doesn’t go to the authorities. Instead, she teaches Sunday School far from the church building where Chambliss preaches. Clem Barefield is the third narrator and the sheriff of the county. He understands the people in this community well. Though he has his demons, he seeks to be a moral man.
Jess and Stump’s mom trusts Pastor Chambliss. One day Jess and Stump see something the adults don’t want them to see. The next day Stump is taken to a healing service when the “healing” gets out of hand, and Stump dies. The perspectives of Jess, Adelaide and Clem combine as we learn of the story of Stump’s death on the alter at Chambliss’s church. And the reason Stump was “chosen” has little to do with healing. The situation is more complicated than the townspeople know. Nonetheless, they follow this evil charlatan Chambless. As Adelaide tells us, “People out in these parts can take hold of religion like it’s a drug, and they don’t want to give it up once they’ve got hold of it. It’s like it feeds them, and when they’re on it, they’re likely to anything these little backwoods churches tell them to do.”
The novel’s well-developed characters and dramatic narration make it a compelling read. We learn about the back story and the carnage that occurs after Stump’s death. I only wish that Wiley Cash had given his disabled character, Stump, a voice. Though the book is critical of rogue religious figures, I also wanted Cash to be more condemning of manipulative evangelical churches. This uncritical loyalty Cash writes about can affect wealthy urban people as easily as poor rural people. People have hard lives, and faith can ameliorate pain. As Adeline says, “Lord knows that when people don’t get what they need, they take what they can find.”
