Critical for its underexplored subject.
This novelization of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom graphically describes the carnage as Christian Russians slaughter their Jewish fellow townspeople.
Three protagonists startlingly reduce to two when one, a Christian 14-year-old, is stabbed to death by his uncle, who covets the family tobacco business. Over the following months, Kishinev’s newspaper Bessarabetz whips the city into a frenzy by claiming that Jews murdered Mikhail to use his blood for baking matzah, urging, “we need to come together, fellow Christians, to purge our town of Jews.” The narrative shifts focus between Rachel and Sergei, friends of Mikhail, for the lead up to, climax and aftermath of the pogrom. Rachel is Jewish: Rioters butcher her father and neighbors in front of her, smash houses and businesses and upend her world. Sergei is Russian Orthodox. Although son of the look-the-other-way police chief, Sergei steadfastly repudiates the blood libel but, as a 14-year-old, can’t prevent the slaughter. Sanders’ debut has generic prose and occasional anachronisms, but nonetheless adeptly conveys the history, from Mikhail Rybachenko’s real name to the bitter bigotry and bloodbath. One odd misstep: The text paints Rachel’s titular “secret”—her knowledge of Mikhail’s true murderer—as crucially important, as if that information could, in the right hands, have saved lives. But Russia and Eastern Europe’s pogroms (including Kishinev’s second, in 1905) needed no trigger beyond anti-Semitism.
Critical for its underexplored subject. (historical note, glossary) (Historical fiction. 10-15)Pub Date: April 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-926920-37-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Second Story Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stronger books may exist about the 1960s, but female friendship tales never go out of style.
For “bad girls,” hell can be a place on Earth.
In Houston in the early ’60s, girls only seem to have two choices: be a good girl and get married or be a bad girl and live your life. Fifteen-year-old Evie, from a working-class White family, became a bad girl after her sister’s shotgun wedding took her away from home. Mexican American neighbor Juanita, who smokes, drinks, wears intense eye makeup, and runs with the tough crowd, takes Evie under her wing, but despite the loyalty of this new sisterhood, Evie often feels uncertain of her place. When a rich girl from the wealthy part of town named Diane saves Evie from assault by killing the attacker, Evie finds a new friend and, through that friendship, discovers her own courage. This work borrows a few recognizable beats from S.E. Hinton’s 1967 classic, The Outsiders—class tensions, friendship, death, and a first-person narrative that frequently employs the word tuff—but with a gender-swapped spin. Overall, the novel would have benefited from a stronger evocation of the setting. During an era of societal upheaval, Evie struggles to reconcile her frustration at the limited roles defined for her and her friends, with many moments of understanding and reflection that will resonate with modern readers’ sensibilities—although sadly she still victim blames herself for the attempted assault.
Stronger books may exist about the 1960s, but female friendship tales never go out of style. (author's note, resources) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-23258-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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