A thoroughly researched and intensely moving remembrance.
In this debut memoir, a Jewish American woman charts her family’s escape from Nazi-occupied Europe and celebrates the memory of a sibling she never met.
It was a hot afternoon in July 1956 when Halperin discovered that she had a sister. The 11-year-old author was enjoying a picnic with her parents in Bear Mountain State Park in New York when her father, Ignas, had a chance encounter with a fellow Polish refugee. The meeting led to a revelation that the author’s older sibling, Yvonne, had died while the family was fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe for America. However, Halperin had been unaware of her existence. The author begins the narrative by documenting her parents’ lives in Poland before World War II. She describes how her mother spoke of her youth in Lodz as “a great life…a life full of family all around.” Her parents married in 1935 and later relocated to Brussels, where Ignas opened a shoe shop. Yvonne was born in 1938, and the following year, Germany invaded Poland. By 1940, the family joined the crowds of desperate refugees intent on escape. Halperin follows her family’s passage through Bordeaux, France, to Portugal and onward to Jamaica where, tragically, Yvonne died following a bicycle accident. Presented in landscape orientation and in full color, the book records a journey of terror, hope, and loss, using family photographs, letters, and legal documents. It’s like being allowed access to a family’s private archive, and Halperin’s erudite, tender prose carefully explains the significance of each and every slip of paper. For instance, regarding her mother’s application for a U.S. immigration visa, she writes, “Hala tightened her grip on the pen. She pictured the marble stone they placed above Yvonne’s grave and with a heartache that was unbearable, she wrote: ‘I have no children.’ ” The author’s laconic but powerfully evocative style allows the reader to step back to the very moment when this heartbreaking declaration was made. Overall, this is an important and deeply personal memoir that vividly documents the struggles of a refugee family.
A thoroughly researched and intensely moving remembrance.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-692-84489-2
Page Count: 86
Publisher: JMA Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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