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ilse's review against another edition
2.0
It is
as though I lay
under a low
sky and breathed
through a needle’s eye.
(W.G. Sebald, Unrecounted)
However this lengthy debut novel with epic aspirations promisingly enough starts with a gripping quote by W.G. Sebald and despite the noble intentions of the author, partly inspired by the experiences of her grandparents in their survival of the Holocaust, as a whole this book in the end frustrated and slightly exasperated me, even if my expectations on it actually were not very high. When I heard my real life reading group chose it as our opening read for the new reading year - assuming at that moment the novel entirely fictionalised – I admit wrestling with my own personal bias towards the book, thoughtlessly inclined to classify it as another book by a young American author having written a fictionalised Holocaust tale, with a syrupy love story at the centre - or another novel in the line of The Book Thief or Everything is Illuminated. Unfortunately, basically it turned out to be such a tale, be it maybe less sentimental than Markus Zusak’s – and far more serious in tone than Jonathan Safran Foer’s – less imaginative, also.
As apparently not sharing the positive consensus on this novel in the group discussion last week and bearing the rave ratings here on GR in mind, it seems unwise to expound further on the story itself, other readers have already substantially explained more eloquently than I can why reading Orringer’s novel can be a frustrating experience. My thoughts pretty much concur with Wendy's and Katie's in depth analysis of the story and Orringer’s style.
Wondering why this novel didn’t work for me, I came across this quote.
Maybe it is just me cringing at such sentences – maybe other readers would too, as Orringer perseveres in this level of detailistic description throughout the whole novel, smothering the relevance of her subject, the pace of the story and the reader’s willingness and ability to empathize with the protagonists in her oddly overwrought style, her adjectivitis, her extravagant use of colour, her adorning every ray of light with silver and gold, her unfaltering illumination of the elegance of the hats and stylishness of her characters even when threatened by deportation and death. The novel painfully illustrates what distinguishes a lavish, delightfully lyrical or musical style from purple prose, vexingly spackling up every possible crack or crevice still left in the reader’s imagination. Orringer’s style and the supremacy of the mawkish love story are regrettably detrimental to her pursuit for verisimilitude notwithstanding her admirably thorough research on the persecution of the Jews of Hungary during WWII, the gradual deprivation of their rights, their forced service in labour camps (munkaszolgálat) and the eventual deportation to the extermination camps once Horthy couldn’t resist the pressure of his Nazi allies any longer from March 1944 on (more on this on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Hungary).
In our reading group there was a certain irritation with the high degree of accidentalness to the story, the numerous lucky strikes saving some of the characters in the story, which however struck me as not such an uncommon viewpoint in the context of the Holocaust. Survival, even if not altogether random, after all in some respects was a matter of sheer coincidence, which is poignantly evoked by the famous poem Any Case by Wislawa Szymborska, which Julie Orringer integrally includes to close the story and which could be seen as a poetical summary of the plot of the novel:
(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)
(The Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial in Budapest (by Can Togay and Gyula Pauer) to honour the people who were killed by a fascist Arrow Cross militia in Budapest during World War II. They were ordered to take off their shoes, and were shot at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river.)
Observing that many other readers were deeply moved by Orringer’s fictional Jewish-Hungarian family epic, I humbly admit I wasn’t. For reading fiction on the Holocaust I’d rather recommend [b:Tzili: The Story of a Life|57836|Tzili The Story of a Life|Aharon Appelfeld|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348212711l/57836._SY75_.jpg|2240437] by Aharon Appelfeld, [b:Austerlitz|88442|Austerlitz|W.G. Sebald|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1516499623l/88442._SY75_.jpg|2193696] by W.G. Sebald, [b:Mendelssohn is on the Roof|1188126|Mendelssohn is on the Roof|Jiří Weil|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348597705l/1188126._SY75_.jpg|1176115] by Jiří Weil and [b:Maybe Esther: A Family Story|37755360|Maybe Esther A Family Story|Katja Petrowskaja|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1514431942l/37755360._SY75_.jpg|71036039], Katja Petrowskaja’s account on her family and the Babi Yar massacre.
as though I lay
under a low
sky and breathed
through a needle’s eye.
(W.G. Sebald, Unrecounted)
However this lengthy debut novel with epic aspirations promisingly enough starts with a gripping quote by W.G. Sebald and despite the noble intentions of the author, partly inspired by the experiences of her grandparents in their survival of the Holocaust, as a whole this book in the end frustrated and slightly exasperated me, even if my expectations on it actually were not very high. When I heard my real life reading group chose it as our opening read for the new reading year - assuming at that moment the novel entirely fictionalised – I admit wrestling with my own personal bias towards the book, thoughtlessly inclined to classify it as another book by a young American author having written a fictionalised Holocaust tale, with a syrupy love story at the centre - or another novel in the line of The Book Thief or Everything is Illuminated. Unfortunately, basically it turned out to be such a tale, be it maybe less sentimental than Markus Zusak’s – and far more serious in tone than Jonathan Safran Foer’s – less imaginative, also.
As apparently not sharing the positive consensus on this novel in the group discussion last week and bearing the rave ratings here on GR in mind, it seems unwise to expound further on the story itself, other readers have already substantially explained more eloquently than I can why reading Orringer’s novel can be a frustrating experience. My thoughts pretty much concur with Wendy's and Katie's in depth analysis of the story and Orringer’s style.
Wondering why this novel didn’t work for me, I came across this quote.
‘On the floor was a thick red rug that smelled of woodsmoke; on the bed, a butter-colored bedspread made from a torn theatre curtain. And beside the hearth was a deep low armchair of faded vermilion plush, a reject he’d found one morning on the sidewalk in front of the building. It had been lying facedown in a posture of abject indignity, as though it had tried and failed to stagger home after a night of hard drinking. The chair had a droll companion, a fringed and tufted footstool that resembled a shaggy little dog’.
Maybe it is just me cringing at such sentences – maybe other readers would too, as Orringer perseveres in this level of detailistic description throughout the whole novel, smothering the relevance of her subject, the pace of the story and the reader’s willingness and ability to empathize with the protagonists in her oddly overwrought style, her adjectivitis, her extravagant use of colour, her adorning every ray of light with silver and gold, her unfaltering illumination of the elegance of the hats and stylishness of her characters even when threatened by deportation and death. The novel painfully illustrates what distinguishes a lavish, delightfully lyrical or musical style from purple prose, vexingly spackling up every possible crack or crevice still left in the reader’s imagination. Orringer’s style and the supremacy of the mawkish love story are regrettably detrimental to her pursuit for verisimilitude notwithstanding her admirably thorough research on the persecution of the Jews of Hungary during WWII, the gradual deprivation of their rights, their forced service in labour camps (munkaszolgálat) and the eventual deportation to the extermination camps once Horthy couldn’t resist the pressure of his Nazi allies any longer from March 1944 on (more on this on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Hungary).
In our reading group there was a certain irritation with the high degree of accidentalness to the story, the numerous lucky strikes saving some of the characters in the story, which however struck me as not such an uncommon viewpoint in the context of the Holocaust. Survival, even if not altogether random, after all in some respects was a matter of sheer coincidence, which is poignantly evoked by the famous poem Any Case by Wislawa Szymborska, which Julie Orringer integrally includes to close the story and which could be seen as a poetical summary of the plot of the novel:
It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.
You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. On the left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.
You were in luck - there was a forest.
You were in luck - there were no trees.
You were in luck - a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
a jam, a turn, a quarter inch, an instant.
You were in luck - just then a straw went floating by.
As a result, because, although, despite.
What would have happened if a hand, a foot,
within an inch, a hairsbreadth from
an unfortunate coincidence
So you're here? Still dizzy from another dodge, close shave,
reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside of me.
(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)
(The Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial in Budapest (by Can Togay and Gyula Pauer) to honour the people who were killed by a fascist Arrow Cross militia in Budapest during World War II. They were ordered to take off their shoes, and were shot at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river.)
Observing that many other readers were deeply moved by Orringer’s fictional Jewish-Hungarian family epic, I humbly admit I wasn’t. For reading fiction on the Holocaust I’d rather recommend [b:Tzili: The Story of a Life|57836|Tzili The Story of a Life|Aharon Appelfeld|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348212711l/57836._SY75_.jpg|2240437] by Aharon Appelfeld, [b:Austerlitz|88442|Austerlitz|W.G. Sebald|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1516499623l/88442._SY75_.jpg|2193696] by W.G. Sebald, [b:Mendelssohn is on the Roof|1188126|Mendelssohn is on the Roof|Jiří Weil|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348597705l/1188126._SY75_.jpg|1176115] by Jiří Weil and [b:Maybe Esther: A Family Story|37755360|Maybe Esther A Family Story|Katja Petrowskaja|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1514431942l/37755360._SY75_.jpg|71036039], Katja Petrowskaja’s account on her family and the Babi Yar massacre.
katiedurow's review against another edition
4.0
this book was so long but so worth it. i loved the language, the storytelling. i cried and at times it was hard to keep going. but these stories should be told, and i have scarcely come across a book that focuses on eastern europe during world war two.
lostinfrance's review against another edition
3.0
This book was a bit of an albatross this past year- but I chose to read it....and then figured out it was 700+ pages...so back and forth between an ebook and a library copy. Not sure how this appeared on my to read list, but it has sat there for 8 years....bc I have a copy of it somewhere (probably in a shed).
This book tells the story of a Hungarian man- and his two brothers/family from before WWII- until....the end of their lives. The main character goes to school in Paris- and travels with barely any funding- and no knowledge of the language and thrives in his new city. Until Nazis and WWII go underway- he is Jewish and he finds himself having to stop his studies as an architect and return home....where he crosses paths with his other two brothers....and we go deep into the persecution of Jews in Hungary...and how he survived, just barely.
I learned from this book, but I can no longer read books about the Holocaust. I was obsessed and read so many in middle school and high school, but now- it is hard. The tales and went through, the hardship his family went through, the deaths of family and friends, the loss of education, the escape to avoid more pain- it was all a part of his family's story. I am glad I stuck with it. I am not sure it needed to be a tome, but I wanted to make sure there was some closure for Tibor's family (brothers/parents/wife/children...).
Read if you enjoy historical fiction that covers a couple generations.
This book tells the story of a Hungarian man- and his two brothers/family from before WWII- until....the end of their lives. The main character goes to school in Paris- and travels with barely any funding- and no knowledge of the language and thrives in his new city. Until Nazis and WWII go underway- he is Jewish and he finds himself having to stop his studies as an architect and return home....where he crosses paths with his other two brothers....and we go deep into the persecution of Jews in Hungary...and how he survived, just barely.
I learned from this book, but I can no longer read books about the Holocaust. I was obsessed and read so many in middle school and high school, but now- it is hard. The tales and went through, the hardship his family went through, the deaths of family and friends, the loss of education, the escape to avoid more pain- it was all a part of his family's story. I am glad I stuck with it. I am not sure it needed to be a tome, but I wanted to make sure there was some closure for Tibor's family (brothers/parents/wife/children...).
Read if you enjoy historical fiction that covers a couple generations.
daniellesocher's review against another edition
4.0
I would've given this 5 stars but was a bit longer than it needed to be.
heidilreads's review against another edition
4.0
so, it took me ~11 months to read this book. it's not a short book. it's wonderful, but because of my long list of WW2 readings, i had to set it aside on a regular basis... basically, when i felt like i didn't want to return to those feelings of sadness, frustration, etc. it's quite the saga, at roughly 500 pages, and really takes you through the long long time that was the 1940s.
shailydc's review against another edition
3.0
This book was on my to-read list for over 6 years and the length always kept me from picking it up.
I liked the first half but the back half dragged on, there was just way too much detail.
I liked the first half but the back half dragged on, there was just way too much detail.
emme88's review against another edition
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
jessicakimmet's review against another edition
5.0
Very well written, and intriguing book. I learned a lot about WWII in Eastern Europe. Emotionally difficult to read, of course. How could it be anything but?
Definitely recommend.
Definitely recommend.