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Sept. 14, 2012
Travel through time, place
Most of the books reviewed highlight significant moral issues.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Family is at the heart of every novel reviewed in the Jewish Independent this year – the families into which we are born, those that choose us and those we choose to join or make for ourselves. In addition, whether writing for a younger audience or an older one, all of the authors comprising this review explore at least one significant moral issue, and do so in a way that will encourage many readers to engage in further research or discussion on the topics raised.
For the younger set
Every life is precious. A belief to which most of us subscribes. However, to what extent would we defend that belief? In The Secret of the Village Fool (Second Story Press, 2012), set in Poland in the 1940s, the Zeiger brothers, Milek and Munio, are taught to live generously, their mother sending them off with soup, bread and clothes for a neighbor, who the boys think is “strange” because he talks to animals and plants, and doesn’t eat meat. The neighbor, Anton, repays their kindness, and more. When the Nazis come to round up the Jews of the village, Anton hides the entire Zeiger family, as well as a young Jewish girl who managed to avoid capture.
Written by Rebecca Upjohn, with watercolor illustrations by Renné Benoit, The Secret of the Village Fool is based on a true story, and includes a What Happened After section featuring photographs of the Zeiger family, the entrance to the root cellar where they hid from the Nazis and, of course, Anton Suchinski. This special section tells of what happened to the Zeigers and the relationship that the family maintained with Suchinski after the war. In 1992, Suchinski was recognized as a Righteous Among Nations at Yad Vashem.
Alone, Upjohn’s story would have been a fine way of approaching a discussion of the Holocaust with readers at least seven years old. By sharing what happened after the story, it becomes an excellent resource.
***
A futuristic Oliver Twist aimed at readers 10 and up, Richard Ungar’s Time Snatchers (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2012) is a fun, compelling read, suspenseful as well as a little wistful. Instead of Fagin, there’s Uncle, who rules his teenage orphan thieves through the use of (graphically described) force and fear, encouraging rivalries that will earn him more profit, the health of his thieves not even rating a worry.
It is 2061. A year earlier, the Great Friendship Treaty was signed between the United States and China and the novel begins in that time period, where the historic item for which someone in 2061 is willing to pay a bundle is the flag made especially for the occasion. Caleb’s mission is spoiled by Frank, whose main goal seems to be making Caleb’s work life and love life miserable.
While Ungar is guilty of the Star Trek ploy of creating technology that can solve every problem – most notably a pill, two of which will conveniently erase a person’s memory of anything that happened before dinner the night before – he doesn’t write the easy ending, which was a nice surprise. Ungar is adept at dialogue and description; he makes you cheer for the good guys and hope the bad guys get their comeuppance. And, young readers actually will learn some real history along the way, via the theft of a Winston Churchill umbrella and a Chinese vase from 1431, to mention but two objects on Uncle’s “shopping list.”
***
The premise of The Baby Experiment (Dundurn, 2012) is intriguing, even if the novel isn’t Anne Dublin’s best work. Written about a 14-year-old girl, it reads as if it were written by a 14-year-old girl. However, it is at least a teenage girl dealing with significant moral issues – matters that are not only relevant to the 1703 time period in which the novel is set, but to today.
Living in Hamburg, Germany, Johanna’s father has died after being attacked by robbers, so she sets off to get a job at an orphanage to help her mother make ends meet. Her mother gives her permission to work, despite disapproving – respectable girls stay at home till they are married, and they practise their faith – and being worried about her daughter, as the world is not safe for Jews. To make matters more dangerous, Johanna pretends to be Christian in order to get the caregiver position, which is illegal.
While Johanna tries to be a good and obedient worker, she must do something when babies start dying as a result of an experiment being conducted at the orphanage. She kidnaps one of them, soliciting the help of a delivery man, and is joined on her danger-laden journey by a fellow caregiver with whom she’s become friends, though Cecile doesn’t know that Johanna is Jewish.
The Baby Experiment touches on the ethics of scientific experimentation, human development theories, identity and religious observance in the face of life-threatening antisemitism, friendship, the kindness and brutality of strangers, and more. While this may sound like a lot for a teenager to handle, and like the novel should be a page-turning read, Dublin doesn’t develop the moral issues in depth and she doesn’t make the journey tense enough – for example, another traveler comes along just at the right moment, saving Johanna and Cecile from a potentially tragic robbery, and, while Cecile is upset when she finds out that Johanna is Jewish, there is no real concern that Cecile will expose the secret or abandon her friend. The Baby Experiment is an interesting enough read, but it had the potential to be much better.
Fiction for adults
With Web of Angels (Knopf Canada, 2012), Lilian Nattel tackles some very difficult subject matter – not only content-wise but stylistically as well. Set in a fictional Toronto neighborhood that seems idyllic, her protagonist, Sharon Lewis, is married to Dan, an all-around nice guy, she’s a perfect mom and they have three wonderful kids. Almost immediately, the image is destroyed – their teenage son’s girlfriend, Cathy, calls Josh to share the horrific news that her pregnant sister, Heather, has shot and killed herself. (The baby is saved by Cathy and Heather’s mother, a doctor, who performs a C-section.)
Sharon suffers from dissociative identity disorder (DID) and it seems that, while Sharon is in as much shock as the rest of the once-tranquil neighborhood, her other selves know what happened to Heather and that Cathy is also in danger. Nattel does a good job at interweaving all of Sharon’s selves, including several “Inside” sections that attempt to explain to readers unfamiliar with DID the inner struggle of someone who has the disorder. It is a bold attempt that doesn’t always succeed, but when Nattel is narrating the story from a different heroine’s (or hero’s) perspective, she very effectively portrays the unique personality of each “alter,” from Lyssa to Alec to Callisto and others.
Dan is a loving and supportive partner to Sharon, and the other friends and neighbors she enlists to help her are all a little too perfect, but that underscores the truly repulsive and criminal actions of Heather and Cathy’s family, and the truth that evil can happen anywhere. The hopeful message, however, is that anyone can make a positive difference – even if they don’t feel up to the task.
***
If you enjoy listening to grumpy old men kvetch, then you will enjoy Michael Tregebov’s The Shiva (New Star Books, 2012). The main alte kaker is Mooney, a born loser in love and money, but with a loyal group of friends and a supportive mother and brother, though the sibling relationship is wrought with mutual jealousy, not the least over money, as Mooney’s brother, Dave, has become a millionaire family man, while Mooney has become a divorced welfare recipient. However, with the help of Dennis, a First Nations residential school survivor and a financial markets wizard, Mooney and his buddies plan to make money hand over fist from the subprime mortgage crisis that Dennis predicts before its effects begin to surface in 2008.
Part caustic humor, part economic and social commentary, part family drama, Tregebov throws in some sex-addiction, dominatrix discussions and observations about the “Nazi holocaust,” as Dennis calls it, and the genocide attempted in Canada of First Nations peoples, in an attempt to make his narrative more controversial and, hence, more exciting. There are some other tidbits – for example, in Dennis’ view, not surprisingly, “Palestinians are the Indians and the Israelis are the Europeans who came to take their land.” Tregebov’s hope, no doubt, was that such boundary-pushing dialogue would make The Shiva more interesting, but it’s forced in the case of the sex talk and poorly argued as concerns the political/social commentary. These passages come off as solely meant to titillate and/or offend rather than entertain, educate or convince readers of anything.
***
I Am Forbidden: A Novel (Hogarth, 2012) is Anouk Markovits’ English-language debut. Her first novel was written in French, and I Am Forbidden has the feel of a French novel, its language elegant and poetic, evocative of a grand romantic era that has come violently to an end. It depicts beautifully and often painfully how one family strictly adheres to centuries-old traditions, completely stifling – out of love and fear – any attempt to reach intellectual and spiritual fulfilment another way.
The novel begins near the end of the Holocaust, as five-year-old Mila Heller is saved from sure death by Josef Lichenstein, who was saved as a young boy by his family’s non-Jewish housekeeper and who, in turn, is brought back into the Jewish fold by Mila’s adopted parents, Zalman and Hannah Stern. Both Mila and Josef have witnessed their families’ brutal murders, and both seek comfort in their faith, Mila specifically preparing for the Messiah’s arrival, for, “in Milah’s prayer, the Messiah’s coming was not the glory of the Temple rebuilt but a kitchen with Mila’s mother in it, a bedtime with the story Mila’s father had not finished telling her.”
The Sterns’ eldest daughter, Atara, wrestles with doubt. When the family is forced, in 1947, to flee to Paris from Sibui in southern Transylvania, when the government starts implement anti-Jewish laws, Atara hides her excitement about the move from her father. When she is later corporeally punished by her father for publicly breaking Shabbat, Atara’s separation from her family begins – a split that becomes irreparable when, returning from the girls’ yeshivah, Atara spots a newspaper story on how the Satmar Rebbe escaped the Holocaust, and she begins to question his authority.
There are too many memorable passages to cite, but what stands out is that Markovits, who herself left her Satmar home at 19 to avoid an arranged marriage, does not skewer or ridicule the beliefs or actions of the Sterns and their co-religionists. There are a couple of characters for whom that level of observance and social sanction has tragic consequences, and Atara has clear reasons for wanting more freedom, but, for many members of the community, the limitations and unambiguous expectations provide purpose and the basis for a good life – and it doesn’t stop Atara’s family from exhibiting their love for her, “May Her Name Be Erased.”
I Am Forbidden is a very Jewish book, and it would be interesting to know how accessible it is to other readers. Even for most Jewish readers, Markovits is treading less-covered ground, but she trusts her audience and, a little melodrama near the book’s end notwithstanding, she has written a tender, intelligent and non-judgmental novel that will engender much thought and discussion long after it is read.
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