what comes after

The Living and the Lost by Ellen Feldman

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: As teenagers, Meike and her brother David were sent to America from Germany in the aftermath of Kristallnacht.  Their parents and younger sister Sarah stayed behind.  Meike, who Americanizes her name to Millie, spends WWII at Bryn Mawr, and then as an editor at a magazine.  David enlists as soon as he turns 18.  Both go back to Berlin during the occupation, both to help in various official and unofficial capacities, and to try to make sense of what happened to their family, their city, and their country.

The reader's first question will be: what happened to the rest of the family?  The answer, and Meike's journey to come to terms with it, will haunt readers beyond the last page.  The second question may well be: can Germany and the German people ever recover?  History more or less tells us the answer to that question, but Feldman's exploration of the immediate aftermath of the war will also not soon be forgotten by readers.

Feldman has put all the pieces together to form a worthwhile addition to the genre.  She has a light touch on this weighty topic, but does not shy from addressing the mass hatred and prejudice on both the German and American side.  She brings her scenes and characters to life with heartwrenching feeling.  No reader will escape this book unscathed, and yet it is not so emotional as to get in the way of being able to process the narrative and really think about the larger story.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

Mission: Disappointing (but only a little)

His Majesty's Hope by Susan Elia MacNeal

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: As you can see from my reviews of Winston Churchill's Secretary and Princess Elizabeth's Spy, I predicted that the second Maggie Hope mystery would be better than the first, and I was duly rewarded.  I therefore had high hopes for this third installment, but unfortunately, Maggie's mission to Berlin didn't exactly live up to its promise.  

Now with the elite Special Operations Executive, Maggie continues her somewhat maverick approach to acts of derring-do on behalf of His Majesty with a two-pronged mission in Berlin. Unfortunately, most of the people she encounters during her exploits there fail to come alive on the page.  Add to that less-than-convincing mission details and some entirely-too-coincidental meet-ups, and this adventure just doesn't measure up.  But MacNeal has already proven that she has what it takes in this genre, so I'll continue to hope for good things in future Maggie Hope adventures.

Two additional notes: First, this book shouldn't really be called a mystery, since there is no mystery to be solved.  Second, MacNeal shouldn't feel the need to rip off scenes from tv shows, although I'm sure it was entirely an unconscious thing on her part.  She chose one of my favorite scenes from an excellent show (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), but I was still very disappointed.  Her writing is strong enough without resorting to copying, even from the greats.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

among the Righteous

Victor Kugler: The Man Who Hid Anne Frank by Rick Kardonne and Eda Shapiro

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: biography

Review: Almost everyone knows the story of Anne Frank. Far fewer people know the story of one of the men who hid her and her family from the Gestapo for 2 years. The mere fact of having his story of bravery be told makes this book worthwhile.

Victor Kugler's story shines brightest when told in his own voice. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen very often. Large portions of the book are taken from the notes of Eda Shapiro, who interviewed Kugler late in his life. This is fine, as far as it goes, but Shapiro's words are also used to give us historical background information on topics such as WWII and the history of Jews in Holland. Surely a more authoritative source could have been found for these subjects.

At least this historical background is interesting. Not so the rest of the book's padding, including descriptions of various dramatic and musical productions of Anne Frank's story that Kugler attended and his reaction to them, and descriptions awards and honors that Kugler was given, including his inclusion among the Righteous Gentiles at Yad Vashem, all well-deserved. I could have lived with a lot less of this extraneous material, especially since Kugler's story stands so well on its own.

FTC disclaimer: I received this book free from the publisher in exchange for this review.

awkward

Ostrich Feathers by Miriam Romm

Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: memoir

Review: When reading a book in translation, it's always hard to tell whether any awkwardness in the text comes from the original or the translation. And there's a lot of awkwardness in this story, though not all of it can be attributed to problems in translation. Some of the awkwardness could go either way, such as the stilted dialogue (I understand that recreating dialogue in a memoir can be problematic, but I think most readers would agree that ease of reading trumps efforts to be strictly faithful to events, as long as gist and meaning are maintained).

Other kinds of awkwardness are easier to pinpoint, such as when the author tells us that she wishes she had broached the subject of her father earlier so that she would have had an opportunity to talk to his friends who are now either dead or past the point where she can talk to them about their memories of her father. This would indeed be unfortunate, except that throughout the book we are repeatedly given the memories of several of her father's friends, given, we are told, directly from them to her.

This extensive awkwardness is a very unfortunate factor in what otherwise could have been a very good read. The author's quest to find her father, lost during the Holocaust, is a very interesting subject, but this book would have benefited greatly from either a ghost writer, or a better editor, or both.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.