A stirring story of Berlin teens’ contributions to the Resistance, but a slightly blinkered view of the Holocaust limits the...
A historical novel focuses on Christian opposition to the Nazis in Germany during World War II.
As the book opens in June 1943, two 17-year-olds set out for Berlin. One is Marek Menkowicz; his parents (a Jewish mother and Roman Catholic father) are missing, so he’s departing Warsaw to stay with an uncle in the German capital. Marek learned to bake and operate a printing press at the monastery led by Father Maximilian Kolbe, later killed at Auschwitz. Meanwhile, history buff Liddy Mittendorf leaves her grandmother’s Munich home to return to the family bakery in Berlin. Her father, Klaus, works nights as a prison guard and delivers secret letters for Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, arrested for plotting to kill Hitler. Impressed by Marek’s marble rye loaf, the Mittendorfs hire him to work mornings at the bakery; in his remaining time, he supports the Resistance by printing fake identification papers. The Mittendorfs don’t know he’s part-Jewish, and Liddy only later learns of his Resistance involvement. With Conrad Keppler of the Nazi police a frequent bakery visitor, the teens must be vigilant. Cornelius (Good News—I Failed, a Story of Inventing in Minnesota, 2011) weaves in the cameos from historical figures nicely and avoids stereotyping Nazis as heartless villains. For instance, Keppler, a former music professor, teaches 8-year-old Willy Mittendorf to play the piano, and the simple message of God’s unconditional love helps the Nazi overcome his bitterness about his brother’s death. Marek and Liddy are gutsy, relatable characters in a budding romance; their adventures should be inspirational for readers of Christian YA fiction. And Bonhoeffer’s words are as poignant as ever: “judging others makes us blind,” and “silence in the face of evil is evil itself.” But the redemption of an apparently evil character like Keppler, though touching, forms a bitter contrast with what happens to Marek and makes the sudden conclusion feel falsely positive. Everything’s coming up roses for the Mittendorfs, it seems, while the Jewish genocide only really appears via a concentration camp scene in a dream.
A stirring story of Berlin teens’ contributions to the Resistance, but a slightly blinkered view of the Holocaust limits the tale’s authenticity.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-946016-10-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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