This remarkable novel gives voice to a character unlike any I've ever met before. The young woman at the center of the story is unnamed and impoverishThis remarkable novel gives voice to a character unlike any I've ever met before. The young woman at the center of the story is unnamed and impoverished, and she has a terrible skill thrust on her: After her mother dies violently, this young woman develops a compulsion to eat earth, and the ingested earth gives her a true vision of how her mother died. Soon everyone has heard about and believes in her eerie skill. As she's living in an Argentinian slum where loved ones regularly disappear, and where violence toward women is an everyday fact, she is inundated with petitions for help. How she navigates a world where she is both shunned and respected is an extraordinary reading journey. The first-person voice of the protagonist is what makes the story so compelling: uncomplaining, clear-sighted, compassionate.
In this novel Max Gross creates a single community of Eastern European Jews who are living their lives in the centuries-old shtetl tradition and who aIn this novel Max Gross creates a single community of Eastern European Jews who are living their lives in the centuries-old shtetl tradition and who are so isolated that they are unaware of the Holocaust. Gross infuses his story with warmhearted humor, but the story itself is thoughtful and deep. It rests on the premise that, somehow, in a forgotten corner of Europe, shtetl culture has endured intact. Of course it's impossible to imagine that any shtetl survived Nazism and this contradiction infuses even the most gentle anecdote with sadness for what has been lost.
Gross's literary language is likewise infused with Yiddish rhythms and Yiddish words, and in this way he honors a nearly-lost literary tradition. The novel is like a tiny, fragile hope against a dark dark time of history, that a culture and a people will endure...and this book, the existence of this story, proves that it has. The publisher description compares Gross with Chabon and Shteyngart but I was reminded of the more lighthearted titles of Isaac Bashevis Singer....more
This is a perfectly executed book of a kind that I don't find enjoyable to read: a detailed period piece where everything about the place and time is This is a perfectly executed book of a kind that I don't find enjoyable to read: a detailed period piece where everything about the place and time is lavishly and meticulously brought to life on the page. I would have liked the novel better if the people weren't so mean to one another. It felt like every conversation was either an argument or a con (which is also in a way also a kind of argument). There is nothing technically wrong with this novel--it just wasn't for me....more
It feels likely that if this novel were sent over the transom from a previously unpublished writer it would never have found an agent much less a publIt feels likely that if this novel were sent over the transom from a previously unpublished writer it would never have found an agent much less a publisher. The adjectives that came to mind as I read included "turgid," "boring," "overwrought," "portentous," "pointless," and "self-absorbed." Even so I was determined to set all these judgments aside. I tried instead to think of this novel as a kind of found art. What if I had found this manuscript in a trash receptacle in a Greyhound bus station in Topeka, for instance? I would have read it with relish, and I would have marveled at the mind that had created it. As I read I let go of any standard I might have for Nicole Krauss, successful literary author, and to take the text on its own terms. By approaching my reading with this frame of mind, the many awfulnesses of the novel were not only tolerable, but endearing....more
I'm not sure if my disappointment is warranted or if I'm just too impatient with the relative flatness of this prose and now I have blown up my disappI'm not sure if my disappointment is warranted or if I'm just too impatient with the relative flatness of this prose and now I have blown up my disappointment into a tragic feeling because I wanted to love the novel unequivocally.
p. 5: "Fix said he would buy the ice himself."
This felt to me like the first sentence Patchett wrote, in the very first draft, because it's such an echo of Mrs. Dalloway's opening, the kind of sentence that will be what a writer will grab first when beginning a new novel. But this opening party scene is so not Mrs. Dalloway, and it's so not "The Dead," and it's so not even Bel Canto. Instead, the writing feels like stirring-the-pot prose. The story feels like it drifts.
But it could also be that it's all just too subtle for the reading mood I'm in....more
While "The Past" has no plot to speak of, even so I stayed up until 1 a.m. last night to finish it. I've rarely felt this invested in characters, or fWhile "The Past" has no plot to speak of, even so I stayed up until 1 a.m. last night to finish it. I've rarely felt this invested in characters, or felt so tenderly toward fictional beings. Hadley moves freely from one character's interior thoughts and feelings to the next. We never learn the full story of any one character. And yet. What we do learn is so apt, so human, that I feel very close to these people. Where the novel soars is in its exploration of private pain, of the essential loneliness of being inside a body, apart from others, thinking thoughts and having feelings that can never be fully known by another. The people in this story are rarely alone, but they're always alone. The point of view most prevalent throughout the novel is being inside the head of a person who is feeling their flaws and isolation from others, feeling these things as a private grief, even when they know they are in the midst of people who love them. This novel is not an unhappy novel, though. It's full of buoyant light, and hope, that even though each of us is frail and flawed, other people find a way to love us. ...more
Unique and enjoyable and surprising. I never knew what was going to happen. The characters act and react in ways so extreme that the novel somehow becUnique and enjoyable and surprising. I never knew what was going to happen. The characters act and react in ways so extreme that the novel somehow becomes an insightful critique of reality, like good satire, although in this case the protagonist is far too moving and sympathetic for this to be considered satire per se. Marie is a character with absolutely zero forethought. She acts without any sense of possible consequences. She has no ambition other than to feel safe and loved. She's an incredible mix of guileless and audacious in the choices she makes. I loved spending time with her as she encounters the world and tries her best to survive in it....more
An extremely enjoyable first novel. I hope Will Chancellor survives the emotional storms of mixed reviews and publishing realities and comes back soonAn extremely enjoyable first novel. I hope Will Chancellor survives the emotional storms of mixed reviews and publishing realities and comes back soon with his second book, which I will definitely read....more
It was exactly "ok." I kept reading. I skimmed a bit. I admired the gentle humor as well as the confidence this writer has to write such a small storyIt was exactly "ok." I kept reading. I skimmed a bit. I admired the gentle humor as well as the confidence this writer has to write such a small story as if it matters--as if a single family's history matters. It does, of course. That's why so many of us love Jane Austen. While Nicholls is no Jane Austin his characters are not entirely predictable, either. I enjoyed it. ...more
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