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A Thread of Grace, by Mary Doria Russell

“A Thread of Grace“, by Mary Doria Russell is an exceptional novel set in Italy during World War II. There aren’t too many novels that take place in the powerful setting of German occupied Italy during the final year of the war, that explore the humanity, humbleness, the partisans, and the willingness of the Italians to help hide both Jewish refugees and Italian Jews.

Russell infuses “A Thread of Grace” with historical fact, and much of it is based on accounts that Italians have relayed to her, memoirs, and on personal stories of both Italian Jews and Jewish refugee Survivors of World War II. The drama within the book is strong. She combines a deep sense of time and place within the pages. The three main famiiies and characters are given strong traits, including their ideals, ethics and religion, within the framework of World War II.

The characters are all named by Russell, before the book’s beginning. They range in age, and are a colorful group of individuals, from Catholics to Jews, from priests to rabbis, farmers to traders, a war hero and a German deserter, nuns, orphans, and all of them are fighting the same cause. Each one of them is trying to stay alive during the most adverse of times. And, each one of them is determined to try to save their Jewish neighbors and friends, including the Jewish refugees. Within the rubble and bombs the strength of each individual unfolds. Whether they live or die is inconsequential, as far as they are concerned. Whether they fight the fight is the primary issue for each one of them. Each individual is determined to contribute their all, no matter the outcome.

War-torn Italy has seen much horror, damage, destruction and lives lost, not only due to the German occupation, but also the allied bombings. The facists are strong, the German army is powerful and well organized. The resistance and partisans are a force to contend with, and the common thread within the villages and towns and its residents is the sameness of their humanity, the role of human kind under war time circumstances, and the shared losses both Catholics and Jews feel, as one. Each person considers themselves to be a piece of the whole, a thread in the fabric of time.

We have Italian Jews, including the rough, tough Renzo Leoni (my favorite character) along with his widowed mother, Lidia Segre. She is as tough as he is. There is Rabbi Iacopo Soncini and his wife, Mirella Casutto. Angelo is their young son, and Rosina is their daughter. Some of the Jewish refugees are Claudette Blum, a teenager, and her father Albert Blum. Duno Brossler is a partisan from Austria, and Liesl and Steffi are his younger sisters, while Rivka Ivanova Brossler is his paternal grandmother. There are several Italian Catholics, including Suora Marta, Massimo Malcovato, the major, the priest Osvaldo tomitz and the priest Don Leto, Santino Cicala is an infantryman, and so many other Catholics, who strive to help the Jews. There are some British characters, and a German character who is trying to receive absolution from a priest, as he sent 90,000 Jews to their death) woven within the pages.

I won’t go into much detail regarding the story line, but you can gather from what I have stated that it is a story whose setting is German occupied World War II Italy, and whose characters strive for the same ending, regardless of age, nationality or religion. You need to read “A Thread of Grace“, yourself, in order to appreciate the intense story, and the author’s efforts.

Mary Doria Russell has written a tapestry of time, whose threads are stretched, worn thin, and threads that often tear and wrinkle, whose weavings tell tales of courage, strength, determination, ideals, ethics, morals, and love and loss, and even redemption, under the extreme circumstances of war. Her descriptives and visuals are incredible and commanding. The strength behind her words convey paintings before our eyes. “A Thread of Grace” is a brilliant book and a masterpiece of humanity, in a world where the loss of one human being becomes the shared and common loss of the entire village or town, the collective as a whole. Mary Doria Russell brings historical fact into the realm of the novel, sensitively, with her overpowering sense of humankind and careful detail to time, place and people. I highly recommend “A Thread of Grace“.

I personally own and have read this book.

Arthur & George

Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes…I give it Five Stars!

A hero-at-large, was in the makings, in the brilliantly written novel, Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes. Although a novel of historical fiction, the book is based on a factual legal case, involving George Edalji, (son of a Vicar, a Parsee father, from Bombay), and the famous, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes mysteries. The book transitions back and forth, between the two, comparing and contrasting their lives. They eventually meet, and the hero-at-large is revealed, within the twists and turns of the legal case, and the two different backgrounds and lifestyles of both Arthur & George.
How the two lives intertwine, comes midway through the book. The story line (although slow in spots), gives us an intense impression of George, and how steadfast and determined he is, throughout his ordeal of receiving malicious letters, harrassing in content, which finally end up in his conviction for a crime/crimes he did not commit. We see Arthur in a light we don’t necessarily know about, in love with a woman who is not his wife, trying to hide his affair from his wife, within the confines of his marriage, and thinking by protecting his wife, that he is being a dutiful and honorable husband.
George retains a positive and definite attitude, and we see his strength and fortitude thrive, compared to the guilt that Arthur carries around with him. Arthur questions himself, his honor (never for once acknowledging that he is a lowly adulterer), his inner strength, and the boundaries between dishonor and honor.

Honor, dishoner, guilt, innocence, they all play a part within the pages. Hero-at-large…you decide who the hero is, in this masterfully written Victorian novel!

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Silent Places Resound

Silent Places, by Jeff Gusky

Silent Places, resounds hauntingly, and takes us on a poignant, and incredible photographic journey to Eastern Europe, where he documented (in B&W photographs) the architecture and landscape of the Holocaust era…Synagogues, houses, landscapes, windows, doors, parks, all images from the past, but actually taken recently. The B&W aspect gives a ghost-like and haunting composition to the photographs…the aura of life within the frame illuminating our senses.
Gusky, an M.D., was an amateur photographer, when he began his sojourn into Eastern Europe. What he brought back, was a visual so intense, that he now has become well-respected in both the art/photographic world and the world of books. His work is museum quality.

Time erodes the landscape, and even the architecture, but the sense of humanity and life still exist within the confines. We feel the aura of the past, brought into the present, the sounds of silence and former life, and activity resounding, for all of us to view. The ghosts of the past, sing their song, through broken windows, deteriorating doors, ruined homes, leaving an indelible mark in the time continuum, compelling us to wonder WHY?

Gusky’s Silent Places is a work that we soon not forget, and a book both compelling and haunting. It is a historical journey into the depths of loss, destruction and places that once hummed with Jewish life.

The history defined within the illuminations of this book define us all on some scale. We all have history, all have ancestral pasts, villages and cities of life, that run through our genetics, our veins. Time erodes much of our past, our life’s history…and in that aspect…this book gives us to ponder and realize, that each person’s history is a part of the universal whole, and leaving the silence deafening. We must never forget the past, the horrors of the Holocaust/Shoah, the lives lost through genocide, lives uprooted, lives of those ashes that continue to hauntingly resound in their silence.

I personally own, and have read this book.

© Copyright 2007 - All Rights Reserved - No permission is given or allowed to reuse my photography, writings, or my poetry in any form/format without my express written consent/permission.

Woman of Letters: Irene Nemirovsky and Suite Francaise

There is an upcoming exhibit beginning September 24, 2008, at The Museum of Jewish Heritage, that I am interested in seeing. I will try to make it to NYC in order to see, it, but if not, there will be an online virtual exhibit. The exhibit is entitled Woman of Letters: Irene Nemirovsky and Suite Francaise.

Her original manuscript for “Suite Francaise” will be part of the exhibit, many family photographs, as well as other items that belonged to her. The exhibit looks to be exciting, informative and a wonderful tribute to Irene Nemirovsky. I would like to be able to not only see her original, handwritten manuscript, but also the family photographs that help to document her life, before she was deported to Auschwitz, where she died of “typhus”.

I am an avid fan of her work, and anxiously await the publication of her next book to be translated into English.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards

What would you do if faced with the same situation that Dr. David Henry was faced with. Can you say for sure?

After delivering twins during a blizzard, the doctor is faced with the fact his second-born, a daughter, has Down’s Syndrome. Deciding, during a time of intense pressure and making a split-second on-the-spot choice, the doctor feels it is in the best interests of the child, to have the baby taken away, to an institution. He feels it is for her own good, and convinces himself he is doing it for the baby’s own good. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby to an institution.

Caroline, chooses to raise the baby as her own daughter, and does it rather successfully, fighting for her daughter’s rights in every phase of her life, making sure she is able to sustain herself and care for herself.

Dr. David Henry obsesses with photography, which has become his outlet for the guilt he constantly feels over his decision. His choice has left a void within his family, a void only he can cure by being forthright, but his apprehensions prevent him from that, and he keeps the secret of his choices.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is an excellent psychological study on strength, caring, guilt, parallel lives, and the power to forgive and be redeemed, through the capability of love’s strength.

Kim Edwards manages to fulfill us with her amazing ability to bring us delicate, yet, compelling prose, emphasizing the haunting choices each character has made.

© Copyright - All Rights Reserved - No permission is given or allowed to reuse my photography, book reviews, writings, or my poetry in any form/format without my expresss written consent/permission.