An emotional tale of unspeakable horrors, family devotion, and art as a symbol of hope.
During World War II, the Nazis easily stole valuable artworks, furniture, and silver from Goodman, who has spent two difficult decades trying to recover them.
The author’s German family, who originally spelled the surname “Gutmann,” were wealthy bankers beginning in the 19th century. In his affecting debut, Goodman, whose earlier career was in the music industry, traces their history, recording that his great-great-grandfather lived in a Dresden castle. The author spends several chapters talking about the financial rise of the family, who once employed Joseph Goebbels in a bank branch. Goodman’s immediate family moved to the Netherlands and lived outside Amsterdam in an estate called Bosbeek, a place the author recalls as having “an almost magical quality.” Then came the Nazis. Goodman rehearses much of the social and military history of the time, tells us about the deaths of relatives in the camps, and describes in excruciating detail how his family lost everything. Going through a box of his late father’s belongings, he discovered the story of his father’s generally fruitless attempt to recover his family’s treasures. Soon, the author and his brother embarked on a long, tempestuous voyage of their own, encountering reluctance, disrespect, doubt, denial, and coldhearted crassness along the way. Throughout the book, Sotheby’s does not come off well. Goodman’s story is alternately wrenching and inspiring, though the diction is often clichéd: writing is on the wall, people hope for the best, places are hell on earth. These locutions often drag this extraordinary story down to the ordinary. Readers will see allusions to many familiar persons and events here: Anne Frank, the Monuments Men, and the works of Degas, Renoir, Botticelli, and numerous other artists. We also learn of some internecine Goodman family squabbles.
An emotional tale of unspeakable horrors, family devotion, and art as a symbol of hope.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9763-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
