Review: Address Unkown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor

Title: Address Unknown
Author: Kathrine Kressmann Taylor
Genre: Literary
First published: 1938

Rating: 7 out of 10

Published in 1938 for an American magazine, it is remarkable just how insightful and ominously prophetic this small book is. World War II hadn't even started yet when Taylor published it, but already it reflects the rise of the Third Reich and the growing hostility toward Jews in Nazi Germany.
Before reading this, it had been my impression that the Holocaust was mostly kept a secret during the war years, or at least heavily watered down, largely due to German propaganda showing videos and photos of happy, healthy Jewish families in clean, functional housing estates. But if an American writer knew about the first tremors of the Holocaust before it even began, maybe I've been misled? I'll have to do some research.

Address Unknown is written entirely in the form of fictional letters sent back and forth between two old friends. The first is Martin Shulse, a man rising in the Fuhrer's ranks in Germany. The second is Max Einstein, a German Jew living in America. At first the exchanges they share are warm and friendly, exactly what you would expect from two friends. But as the Nazi feeling in Germany grows, Martin comes to share his country's prejudices and becomes increasingly hostile toward Max, and the correspondence eventually ends with both men's lives being destroyed.

This book was very interesting, and I thought that the sobering ending was a good one. It was left slightly open for you to wonder about.

This book seemed very realistic to me, as if it could have been actual letters someone found. Surely, this was a situation experienced by many during the years leading up, and during, World War II. I knew it was coming, but I still felt surprised and betrayed when Martin tells Max that Jews are "a sore spot to any nation."

An interesting, sobering read.

Review: Behind the Ice Curtain by Dina Gabel

Title: Behind the Ice Curtain
Author: Dina Gabel
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Cis Communications
Published: 1992
Pages: 507

Rating: 5 out of 10

I neither liked nor disliked this book. I am always especially interested in reading memoirs, because I feel that they are capable of providing such interesting, realistic pictures of historical events. While a terrible detail in historical fiction may be more strikingly written, when you come across some shocking fact in a memoir, you know it's authentic, and there is something more impacting about that.

Behind the Ice Curtain is the story of Dina Shapiro, a Jewish girl who grows up during World War II. Her father is taken away and never seen again in the early days of the war, but her mother stays with her, and the two rely on each other.
Dina was lucky enough that she never experienced the true horrors of the Holocaust, though she did lose her father, her home, and her belongings. She was never in a concentration camp, but her story is still impacting, told in a sad narrative voice.

Often, I feel that Holocaust survivors have amazing stories to tell, but cannot quite word them well enough to let us really see into their experiences. This one was the opposite. Gabel is a fairly good writer, but her story was not interesting enough to carry itself through without the help of many flashback memories to keep it interesting.

There were a few vivid like pictures here - Dina faking an epileptic seizure to save herself from imprisonment, her memory of convincing her father to buy her a bicycle... There was a very sad paragraph where Dina says she collected bars of soap. They were no ordinary bars of soap, however. All stamped with a letter J, they were made of the melted down body fat of Jews who were burnt alive. Dina buys as many as she can find (26), and later buries them in a Jewish graveyard.

I never quite know how to review these memoirs, because it seems wrong somehow to pick apart and criticize the writing skills of Holocaust survivors.

Review: The Year is '42 by Nella Bielski

Title: The Year is '42
Author: Nella Bielski
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Pantheon
Published: 2004
Pages: 224

Rating: 3 out of 10

It didn't take long to discover with great certainty how much of a disappointment this book was going to be. The stilted descriptions, the crazily unstructured plot, and most of all, the author's writing style (or perhaps it was the translation?).
A glance at the inside cover had intrigued me - it contained some of my favorite plot elements. World War II, spies, Paris, society... The author even dropped Coco Chanel's name.
Within just a few pages, however, I couldn't help but choose another book off my library pile to read. Yes, I have a vow to finish every book... But despite this one being relatively brief, I had to force myself to reach the last page.

Immediately after starting this odd book, I noticed the jolting, painful writing. For some reason, the author does not seem to be aware of quotation marks. They were invented for a reason - why does she think she doesn't need them?
Whatever the reason for her pointedly refusing to include one single quotation mark in the entire book, it does not work.
And since there is a lot of dialogue, it was not only extremely annoying, but also confusing and a large barrier between the characters and the reader.
For instance, this part of the book:

"...places the volume of Goethe on the table in front of her. It can't be true! For a long time father has dreamt of finding this edition of Werther! She speaks the words slowly..."

The only indication of a difference between dialogue and narrative is the change of tense. An entire novel of this was beyond tedious.

Also, many, many things in the book simply do not seem to go across to the reader. Was I missing something?
For example, when Hans and Karl suddenly say "Look!" (without quotation marks, though), and point to a Jewish man walking down the street. Why did they do this? Shock? Anger? Fear? It has nothing to do with their conversation, or anything in the story at the moment.
It is a scattered gathering of little things such as this that often made me feel as if I was the third person visiting two lifelong best friends. Things they say, I do not understand or appreciate. And as a reader, this is not a good feeling to have about characters.

The characters themselves were set up to be something grand - a German man residing in Paris who is regarded as a kind of socialite star, his beautiful lover, a spy involved in the French Resistance...
And yet, none of them could hold my interest.
They all remained grounded firmly in the pages of the book, never taking on a life of their own. In fact, quite the opposite.

The plot itself was also pretty much nonexistent. Some authors can pull off this casual wandering through the story, but Bielski cannot. I would find it hard to describe the plot line of this book to anyone who asked, save that it took place in Paris, 1942.

The name dropping on the inside cover? Don't be pulled in... Coco Chanel does not make so much as one appearance in the book, her name is simply mentioned once and that is that.

The only reason that this book is getting 3 stars instead of 2, or perhaps 1, is because I actually liked the book a bit toward the end.
Did the characters grow more lovable? No.
Actually, they disappeared.

The author switches scenes and pulls out attention to another scene entirely. The reason cannot, like many astounding "creative" things she does, be grasped.
But maybe she should have stuck with these characters the entire time, because I liked them, and their stories, much better.
A sorrowful old man who used to play the violin falls in love with a beautiful young opera singer, and a loving daughter seeks to take care of him amidst the terrors of being a Jew in 1942. When her father's soprano love is killed during a Jewish roundup, she tells him that she is simply off singing in another city, and that the war is over.
It is a bittersweet, heartfelt story that I found much more realistic than the first. I can't exactly call it well-written: the writing is simply too jarring.
And, of course, an author can't just introduce completely new characters in the middle of the book for no reason, good characters or bad.

It turned out that the characters did have a relation to the story - the daughter treats Karl (the previous main character) for a rash.
What?!
I wonder where the author got this plot from... A dream, perhaps? It is certainly scattered and bizarre enough to be a possibility, but not in a good way.

All in all, this is quite a bad story. I will not be reading anymore from this author.

Review: Last Waltz in Venna by George Clare

Title: Last Waltz in Vienna
Author: George Clare
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: MacMillan UK
Published: 1980
Pages: 288

Rating: 3 out of 10

Last Waltz in Vienna is a memoir by a Jewish man who was involved with the events leading up to and during World War II in Vienna, Austria.

As much as I wanted to enjoy it, the author's writing style often gave me the feeling that I was being left out. Once in awhile, there were certain moments of warmth that shone through the rest of the text. These were mainly childhood stories about family and everyday experiences that you would expect when growing up. It was here that the author seemed to write most realistically.

However, the other 95% of the book simply never did anything for me. The politics, as viewed by an actual, normal witness of the events, were no doubt as accurate, but strung together clumsily.

Review: Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg

Title: Dream When You're Feeling Blue
Author: Elizabeth Berg
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2008
Pages: 287

Rating - 4 out of 10

Dream When You're Feeling Blue, set during World War II, is at its core, a story of family. The three Heaney sisters spend their days going to dances, helping the war effort, and writing to their soldier boyfriends, fiancees, and crushes. Kitty overcomes her vanity and decides to help as a mechanic on airplanes, all the while confused about her boyfriend Julian, who is overseas. Louise is happily engaged to her fiancee Michael, but must deal with some very hard things in his absence. The youngest, Tish, is forever flirting with new men in uniform and writes to dozens of boys, even though the only one who she really wants is already taken.

This book was average - the Heaney sisters were likable, but I never really felt that I had fully gotten to know them.

I constantly found myself comparing this book to "Little Women," and it was certainly that atmosphere that Berg was trying to write here. There were many similarities, but the lack of depth to the family relationships, as well as a lack of events, made the story fall a bit flat.

Not very much happened in this story - there were dances that the girls went to, and they surely wrote a lot of letters (which never really did anything for the plot), and love interests go through different stages, new crushes emerge, and various other forms of young love.
There were quite a lot of scenes where members of the family were just talking, or even squabbling. Realistic home life, to be sure, but the warmth and coziness that the author seemed to be trying so hard to exude just didn't ever get through to me. It was as if she were trying to make minor characters more noticeable by always having them say sweet, cute, or meaningful things.
For some reason, it just didn't work for me.

Perhaps with strong characters, this book could have been amazing. However, without them, there isn't much to it. This is World War II - surely she could have thought of something that could happen! And yet, if someone asked what the book was about, I'd have to say "Well... There are these girls. And, well, um, that's about it."

I am giving it 3 stars because, even though I wouldn't recommend it, it wasn't that bad. Most of the time, it was enjoyable light reading. Kitty was an insightful, funny character, and I loved all of the 1940's dialogue and slang that the author threw in.

The last few chapters of the book were the strongest, though I had guessed early on that that particular character would die.

The final chapter, which takes us beyond World War II and into present times, shows an eighty year old Kitty, and what happened to her. I wish that I hadn't read it, because I was very disappointed. Was the author trying to write a sad ending or a happy one? I really couldn't tell.

This is a sweet story, but if you're looking for a sister story, I'd advise you to just stick with the classic "Little Women." And as for finding other, better World War II books - well, there's no shortage of those!