VAN IPEREN, ROXANE
THE SISTERS OF AUSCHWITZ: THE TRUE STORY OF TWO JEWISH SISTERS' RESISTANCE IN THE HEART OF NAZI TERRITORY (2018; 2020)
Janny and Lien Brilleslijper were two Jewish sisters who ingeniously managed to contrive ways of sheltering Jewish refugees who were destined for Hitler's concentration camps, and this is their story. Somewhat miraculously, both sisters survived the camps--and, at Bergen Belsen, witnessed the tragic deaths of Anne Frank and her sister Margot.
I am probably not qualified to say much more about this book as, in recorded form, it was difficult to follow, mainly because so many Dutch names of people and places were given but were difficult for a nonspeaker of Dutch to grasp.
15 February 2023
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VERGHESE, ABRAHAM
CUTTING FOR STONE (2009)
This rather long novel may contain more medically explicit details than necessary for telling its story, but it is an absorbing story. There are twin brothers, joined at birth, who go through life in an intense relationship evolving from their difficulty differentiating themselves. There is added complexity because of the circumstances of their birth: A nun who concealed her pregnancy until the onset of labor gave birth to them but died in childbirth, and the presumptive father of the child, a physician at the establishment where the nun had been his assistant, promptly vanished from the scene, never to reappear in his sons' lives until one of them finds him.
Marion, the son who tells the story, comes across as intelligent, kind, altruistic, and compassionate until near the end of the story, and then we see a darker side to him: he announces his presence to the long-lost father by gaining entrance illegally to the father's residence and then rummaging through everything in it, leaving the vandalism for the father to discover on his return. He also renews his acquaintance with a woman with whom he had grown up in a near-brother-sister relationship--and for some inexplicable reason rapes her. It isn't called rape in the novel but the description makes it clear that it was rape.
There could have been reasons: he was justifiably very angry at her, but does anger at any level ever justify rape? And does it really matter that, in effect, he "pays" for this by nearly dying of the hepatitis he contracts from the encounter?
Things get very suspenseful and dramatic towards the end, but I couldn't help wondering how Marion could have fooled me for so long. Or maybe the reader is expected to assume that men just can't control themselves sometimes, and that poor Marion was one such man. Another instance in the novel is the encounter between Marion's father and the nun where he impregnated her, apparently, though not much information is provided about that encounter.
Much of the story takes place in Ethiopia during the reign of Haile Selassie, and there is considerable detail about conditions there at the time. Clearly the author knows whereof he speaks, and the book is well worth reading.
11 January 2025
ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN (1898)
Though called a novel, this work is probably mainly autobiographical. It tells about an Englishwoman married to a German count and how she finds delight in a garden.
16 September 1998
ENCHANTED APRIL (1922)
This is a delightful novel about two married English women who decide to rent a castle in Italy for a month, in order to get away from their husbands and responsibilities for a while. They are obliged to accept two more women at the castle, and the husbands turn up, after all, but the effect is a sunny, charming, witty novel. Its plot is fairly predictable, but the author's originality saves the story from being "ordinary." It was made into an excellent movie, too.
18 March 2004
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VONNEGUT, KURT
ARMAGEDDON IN RETROSPECT AND OTHER NEW AND UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS ON WAR AND PEACE (2008)
This brief collection of assorted Vonnegut works was published posthumously, with an introduction by the author's son Mark Vonnegut.
The works include a letter to his family written shortly after his release from a World War 2 POW camp, telling about the bombing of Dresden--which eventually became the topic for his celebrated novel Slaughterhouse-Five.
In some of the pieces he sounds almost preachy and shrill, but that is the only objection I can think of to make about this valuable addition to the Vonnegut collection. And some people can get away with sounding almost preachy and shrill now and then. He's one of them.
10 October 2010
BAGOMBO SNUFF BOX: UNCOLLECTED SHORT FICTION (1999)
This is a collection of a few very short stories, originally published in Collier's, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, and other periodicals in the 1950s. The stories are formulaic and slight, for the most part, but interesting nonetheless.
5 December 2003
MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY (2005)
Vonnegut appears to have written this short collection of very short pieces when he was 82. The Vonnegut bite is still there.
Unfortunately, a glance at http://www.vonnegut.com/ reveals that the author's heirs are doing quite a business selling a Vonnegut sculpture in a limited edition (called 'Waspwaist") for $9,000 apiece, T shirts with Vonnegut references on them, and silkscreen prints in limited editions at $375 each.
It's unfortunate when a good writer is being turned into a cult and an industry.
23 July 2008
WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE (1968)
A collection of Vonnegut's short stories (1950-1968). Many of them, like "Harrison Bergeron," are predictable and slight, and a reader might finish this book with the strong conviction that Vonnegut is much better at novels than short stories.
The final story may be the most memorable--"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," which shows a future where people can live as long as they want. The story focuses on one family, where Gramps, the oldest, is able to order everyone else around, and the rest of the family must sleep in the hall while Gramps has the only bedroom and bed. The story amounts to a chilling caution about the consequences of overpopulation in the world.
8 October 2006
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