An elegiac, bittersweet, and well-told account of a remarkable man’s life.
Ross’ debut recounts the gripping life of Holocaust survivor Abe Peck.
Ross met Peck while volunteering at a survivors’ event; the result is a book-length interview. The author supplements Peck’s story with personal material and historical background. Peck’s childhood home, the Polish town of Szadek, was invaded by Nazi forces when he was 14 years old. Over the next six years, Peck survived the ghetto, work camps, and forced marches, finally being liberated by Allied forces at age 20. Though Peck’s survival is in a sense a triumph over the Third Reich, the overall tone here is more mournful than triumphant. Peck is part of the 2.5 percent of Szadek’s Jewish population that survived the Holocaust. He lost 83 of his 89 immediate relatives. Peck himself is quick to state that his survival was as much luck—being a certain number in an SS roll call, for example—as it was persistence. Photographs of lost family members further communicate this sense of immense loss. Peck recalls experiences of grief, grueling labor, illness, starvation, anti-Semitism, and cruelty. After his liberation, he married another survivor, had a son, and built a successful furniture business in the United States. A particularly bittersweet chapter portrays Peck’s return to Szadek to help rededicate the town’s Jewish cemetery. While Ross is an able writer, the real impetus of the book comes from Peck: thoughtful, generous, and a natural storyteller. His quietly devastating account of his adolescence is accompanied by incisive reflection on the ways his experiences shaped his life and sense of self. Ross is clearly a good interviewer, although she sometimes intrudes. She describes the death of Abe’s father, for example, as “heart-wrenching”; of course it was, but such interjections are a distraction. Still, the book is an affecting and effective portrait.
An elegiac, bittersweet, and well-told account of a remarkable man’s life.Pub Date: March 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9964708-0-3
Page Count: 298
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
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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