Fiction That Wowed-2020

In my prior blog, I took a look at my five favorite nonfiction books that I read in 2020. I measure nonfiction and fiction by slightly different yardsticks. While I want both to engage me in story, for non-fiction I measure its worth by whether
I learned something I didn’t know or a new way of looking at the world.

Fiction needs to engage me in story, but rather than validating or explaining an outer world, it often gives me insight into an inner world. It may open me up to someone else’s experience and perhaps allow me to recognize something that echoes in my experience as well. 

 

The Flight Portfolio (2019) by Julie Orringer drew my attention because I had read her earlier book The Invisible Bridge which was a past wow. The Flight Portfolio is both history and fiction, so it straddles the fence between fiction and non-fiction. It is based on the story of Varian Fry who undertook an effort to save many of the great artists and writers in Europe from the Nazis during WWII. It raises many questions, not least among them is how we value an individual human life. 

The core story is based on history and I found myself googling many of the people who played a part in this important historical chapter to learn more about them. 

There is also another significant plot which was in part imagined with a few invented characters. It explored the experience of being gay and closeted during the 1940s. I realized I knew very little about this experience and came away with a new appreciation for the complexities of the gay experience historically. While the folding together of these two stories results in complexity, it reflects the reality of our lives. We bring many experiences together to shape our impact on the larger world. Orringer reveals the layers beneath the public story.

Hamnet (2020) by Maggie O’Farrell is a beautiful book in both words and story. By judicious use of both, it becomes something more, an elegy on grief. Based on the outline of Shakespeare’s life, its focus is on his wife and the death of his son at age eleven. O’Farrell studies the white space around the few details that we know and enlarges the story, adding elements that support the rich emotional content of these events. The language is lush and evocative, achingly beautiful and often poetic. If it were just that, it would be enough, but it builds to an ending that releases that emotional energy in yet an additional level of artistry. 

 

Afterlife (2020) by Julia Alvarez is aptly named. It follows the life of Antonia after the death of her husband. The afterlife is both Antonia’s and that of Sam, her late husband, as she channels who he was in relationship to her. It explores the nature of a relationship where we each assume roles in relationship to those of our partner. Sam was the good cop leading with the charitable gesture, leaving her the part of the vigilant one, the bad cop, assuring that they weren’t taken. It was a role she resented a bit. “Why not two good cops, “ he had once proposed. 

Now alone, she is painfully aware of the actions Sam would take when she finds herself in a situation that requires extending herself to help a young immigrant woman. She feels for her familiar boundaries even as she considers how Sam would respond, trying his behaviors on as her way of honoring who he was. Part of her resists this unfamiliar way of being. Everything is now thrown into question without that counterbalance of Sam, as she begins to redefine who she is in this new moment.  There are wonderful insights in this book and Antonio invites us into her musings. In her moments of gratitude for a person Sam brought into her life, she muses “is there an expiration date on the tendrils of a gratitude after the mother root has expired?" In addition to Sam there was another story thread that resonated with me, the relationship with her sisters and the memory they preserve collectively of their late mother, yet another afterlife. 

I had enjoyed Homegoing by Yai Gyasi so picked up her newest book, Transcendent Kingdom (2020). This is a very different book, equally strong, but framed quite differently. While Homegoing is an expansive story following the story of two sisters through eight generations, this book tells its story in a much more limited space, one person as she makes sense of a family tragedy. Gyasi draws from her own life in at least the broad outline of being a Ghanian immigrant growing up in Alabama. In this story her main character, Gifty, is born in Alabama to a family from Ghana. The death of a beloved brother to opioids sends ripples through her family. She becomes a scientist and pursues the study of addiction, seeking to understand it and perhaps offer something back having been unable to save her brother. In addition to the core theme of addiction, it is also a reflection on science, religion and the immigrant experience. 

What is one to make of a book titled Monogomy? Monogomy (2020) by Sue Miller is the story of a relationship and the many satellite relationships that it creates as two people build a life together. The protagonist, Annie, would attribute that broad rich life  surrounded by friendships to her husband Graham, a larger than life personality who loves and relies on Annie to make it all possible. We are introduced to each of them in turn as they recount the story of their meeting and their life together. It is an exploration of a relationship and how two people fit their lives together while preserving who they are. It is what it appears to be, a happy marriage, and yet, upon Graham's death Annie discovers something which causes her to question what she had. How well do we ever know our partner and what does it all mean when they fall short? How do grief and anger co-exist?  While a very different book than Afterlife, it could as easily been titled the same as Annie comes to grips with life after Graham. 

Recommended Reading VI: More Favorite Fiction

Lately I've read some excellent fiction on a variety of Jewish themes that I wanted to share in these pages.  While the themes may be Jewish, these books would appeal to a broad audience and all offer excellent writing and unique perspectives.

It occurs to me that my approach to reading reflects somewhat my approach to my artwork.  I take a subject that interests me and approach it from multiple perspectives. My current show on Holocaust related work  has three bodies of work, one that addresses the responses of Eastern Europe to the Holocaust history, one that looks at pre-war Poland and a third that looks at individual survivor stories.  Similarly these three books circle a topic of interest to me, addressing the way in which Poland deals with its Jewish history, the response of both Americans and the British to refugees in their midst and the memory of lost  loved ones that haunt survivors as they rebuild their lives.


My latest favorite book is a first novel titled A Day of Small Beginnings by Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum.  The story is told through three generations with the connecting thread being Freidl,  the spirit of a woman who once lived in a small shtetl in Poland.  Each generation brings a greater understanding of their heritage and the reader shares their journey.  The first segment begins with a young boy in the early 1900s who is forced to flee his shtetl and comes to America.  In the second segment we find his son, a college professor, in Poland for a lecture.  While there he decides to visit the town from which his father came.  His father had shared little of his past and had rejected religion in his life.  The third segment of the book focuses on the granddaughter, a dance choreographer who goes to Poland to create a performance with a Polish dance company. There she falls in love with a Polish Catholic musician and struggles with the latent anti-Semitism she encounters in Polish culture even as the former Jewish culture is romanticized in other parts of Polish society.

Her journey actually takes her in transit through my ancestral town of Radom and she writes of Krakow and Kazimierz Dolny, both places I got to know well in my travels.  As a result, I could easily picture the locations and it gave an added resonance to her story.  I also could appreciate her struggle to bridge the two cultures and find the common humanity despite historical differences in perspective.  I especially liked the mystical flavor and wisdom as expressed through Freidl juxtaposed with modern day Poland.

In its own way it is a very spiritual book and I found myself touched by its wisdom. It gave me pause, often connecting with my understanding of the world and eloquently giving it voice.

A second book that I found quite captivating was also written in three voices. The author succeeded in making each voice feel very genuine.  Too Jewish by Patty Friedmann is in part based on her parents’ lives.  The first speaker is Bernie, who escaped to the United States at the cusp of WWIl, but was unable to get his mother out as well, a failure that consumed him. He joined the service and found himself in New Orleans where he married a woman who while Jewish came from a long-established family who saw Bernie as a different class.  His accent and religious background made him “too Jewish” in a world where their focus was on fitting into a very hierarchical society.  The second section of the book was in his wife’s voice.  While she and her husband have a genuinely loving relationship, she is in her own battle to prove her life choices to her judgmental parents.  The third section is told in the voice of their daughter who the author clearly identified with.  The book provides interesting insight into Southern Jewish communities and the class distinctions that I had thought fell by the wayside much earlier.  It also addresses the survivor guilt that many refugees carried with them throughout their life.

The third book that I would recommend is called The List by Martin Fletcher. This book also explores the experience of those who escaped, yet still must deal with the loss of family.  It is set in England and is based on the author’s parents’ story.  It addresses the anti-Semitism that arose in England after the war when the refugees were viewed as overstaying their welcome yet had nowhere to which they could return.  The national conscience ultimately objected to segments that espoused those views.  The title of the book refers to the list they keep of family members as they seek to learn their fate even as they rebuild their shattered lives.  Interwoven with the story is the story of Israel as Jews challenge British forces who bar entrance to many refugees.  The Palestinian Jews are divided in their approach with a segment arguing for violence against the British and a subplot in the book which highlights this resistance movement.

Recommended Reading V: Favorite Fiction

I’ve saved fiction for last, a few have been mentioned elsewhere in this series of entries so let me address those that haven't been mentioned previously.

For the Jewish experience in France, there is Sarah’s Key, a book that was recently released as a movie.  It details the gathering of the Jews at the Vel d’Hiv, prior to their deportation.  The story is told through the eyes of a ten year old girl as well as a modern day journalist.    In a prior incarnation the Vel d’Hiv served as the arena for bicycle races, a location that is fondly remembered by Hemingway for the races that he attended there.  I am struck by how such different associations can be attached to the same location at different points in time.  The book was not one of my favorites, but it did illuminate the French history of the Holocaust.  My visits to Paris will never be quite the same.

Also capturing the French experience, although not specifically Jewish, are the two books listed by Irene Nemirovsky.  Although raised as a Catholic, but born as a Russian Jew, the author died in a concentration camp.  A well-known author in her day, in Suite Francaise she writes of the Parisians fleeing Paris ahead of the Germans.   Years later her daughter goes through her papers and discovers this last novel which was ultimately published sixty years after her death.   Fire in the Blood was discovered soon after.

 I just finished the book Smuggled by Christina Shea which relates the story of a Hungarian Jew hidden as a child in Romania by her non-Jewish father’s sister.  The story follows her life after the war under Communist control and is an interesting view of life under Soviet constraints as well as after the fall of Soviet control.

Rashi’s Daughters is a series of books by Maggie Anton and tell the story of the daughters of the famous Talmudic scholar.  I found these quite fascinating from a historical standpoint as they highlight the life of women within the Ashkenazic Jewish culture and present it from a female perspective.   Rashi’s daughters were very unusual in that they studied the Talmud with their father who had no sons.  The Talmud and Talmudic arguments are interwoven into the text.  The stories take place in eleventh century France and the professional roles of Jews as Talmudic scholars and traders are well represented.  The author’s extensive historical research as well as many years of Talmud study enrich these stories.

On the theme of Yiddish there are two books I would recommend in addition to the non-fiction Outwitting History of which I previously wrote.  A few years ago I wrote about my discovery of Dara Horn’s writing.  My favorite book of hers is The World to Come which melds a true story of a heist of a Chagall painting with Yiddish literature and Jewish mysticism. Horn artfully weaves characters from modern day New Jersey with Russian Yiddish writers during the time of Stalin. It has a very magical quality and draws heavily on Yiddish literature. The author won the National Jewish Book Award for her first book and has a doctorate in Hebrew and Yiddish Literature from Harvard.

Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter by Peter Manseau is a well written and fascinating book about a Yiddish poet and his life in Russia and as an immigrant in the US. The poet has written his life story, but his book is in Yiddish so he connects with a young man to help him translate it.  The young man is Catholic, as is the author, and like the author worked as a Yiddish archivist.  I was very intrigued by the author’s background as his prior book Vows is a memoir of growing up as the son of a former priest and nun.  The book felt very authentic in the manner in which it addressed Yiddish themes and I would highly recommend it.

In my opinion Geraldine Brooks has never written a book that didn’t warrant five stars. People of the Book is no exception.  Here she traces the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah through centuries of history and the people who preserved it.  A rare book expert is her modern day character who works to restore the Haggadah and learn its secrets.   This is both a historical novel and a modern day love story.

Finally on my list is the book Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum.  In this book the main character is doing a series of oral histories with both German and Jewish survivors.  The author did Shoah interviews for the Shoah Foundation so writes from her experience.  This current story is interwoven with her mother’s secret love affair with a Jew and her subsequent coercive relationship with a high ranking Nazi.  I’ve heard Blum speak and found her a very engaging speaker as well as a talented author.

With this post, I’ve concluded my discussion of the books that are listed on this blog, but hopefully not my discovery of new books of similar genre.  I welcome any recommendations from readers of books that I may have missed.

Stay tuned for posts on artwork from the Jewish Identity & Legacy project.