AKIN

Emma Donoghue has written a novel here that touches on so many topics. There are many balls that she throws expertly int he air and keeps them all aloft until the very end.  She touches on the Holocaust, and Nice, France, intersecting that with modern life in New York and contrasting the bravery of the resistance and those secreting children out from under the Nazis noses to undercover confidential informant who is working to help the police expose a drug dealer.

We are introduced to Noah Selvaggio, the grandson of a famous photographer, Pere Sonne and son of Margot Sonne.  He is turning eighty years old and for his birthday he is off to Nice, France for the first time since his mother sent him, by himself, at the age of three, to America, 1944 to escape the war,  to meet up with his father, Marc Selvaggio.  His mother joined them three years later.  Noah never learned anymore about his mother's background and now she has passed on.  His sister has also died and left him some pictures he is taking with him to France to try and identify.

Days before his departure, he receives a call from a social worker who informs him that his nephew who died, estranged from the family, from a drug overdose, has left an eleven year old son, Michael Young, who needs a home at least temporarily and Noah is the closest living relative.

As Noah and Michael set off for France they will experience a few huddles to overcome in how to relate to each other and how to work together.  Donoghue tries to create the tension that happens when two people who have never met and have such different backgrounds need to work together.  Noah has never been a parent, and Michael is that tough inner city kid who is worldly and not necessarily good mannered and polite.  He is obsessed with his cellphone and video games. 

 I felt some of this was unrealistic for these unlikely traveling partners.  I did not find that the emotional relationship between the two was well defined.  As they are traveling together, Michael is helping Noah to recreate the history that his mother may have lived through during the war in Nice.  But we are never told the real story which felt unfulfilling. Also, Michael seems to figure things out without any real facts.  Noah, at the same time, is realizing that you don't always know the whole story and we make assumptions based on prior knowledge that could be wrong.  So as he realizes that he may have missed judged his nephew, he becomes more sympathetic to Michael.  But again we never get to find out the true story, which felt frustrating. 

There is a happy ending and it is nice to see that each of the characters has grown and that there is a positive outcome, that life should treat these characters well in the future.  That people are strong and resilient. 

The World That We Knew

Alice Hoffman has once again created a fascinating novel. I loved so many of her previous novels, including The Dovekeepers, The Museum of Extraordinary Things and The Marriage of Opposites.  Her newest novel called The World That We Knew, is a historical novel that mixes reality and magical mysticism to build a story of love, loss and bravery during a time of hate and fear.

Though Hoffman has included Judaism in some of her other books, this time she has written indirectly about the Holocaust.  She brings the reader into the room with a mother who wants to save her young daughter from the atrocities of war that she knows are coming.  Lea Kohn has narrowly escaped being raped and her mother Hanni realizes that Berlin has become too dangerous to survive.  Hanni does not want to leave her own mother behind so she contrives to send twelve year old Lea away.

To protect Lea she she goes to the Rabbi to create a Golem to accompany Lea as she travels to Paris and hopefully freedom.  The Rabbi's daughter is convinced to create this mystical creature and also wants to send her young sister Marta along to escape. The Golem, Ava is created from mud on the banks of the river Spree.  She is brought to life with the recitation of the secret name of G-d.
She is supposed to have no feelings of her own, just the desire of Lea's mother to love her like her mother would and protect her.  Ava is tall, strong and confident. She learns languages — including birdsong — in minutes and can kill on Lea’s behalf.

As they travel together so many things change along the way.  They relationship develops and changes. The reader more and more accepts the reality of Ava and her developing feelings for life and the world becoming more human as time goes on.

Ava represents all the parents who risk their lives and take extreme measures to save their children and protect them during the Holocaust.  Using this fairy tale like soulless supernatural protector out of Jewish folklore to call attention to the harsh realities of World War II.

The Crepes of Wrath

As the snow is falling outside and winter has set in to stay for awhile, reading mystery novels that involve some delicious recipes to go along with a good crime to try and solve.
So I settled in with Tamar Myers series about Magdalena Yoder, the owner and hostess of the PennDutch Inn.  But be careful when you book a room at this Bed and Breakfast, because this is the ninth in a series of murder mysteries that are happening in around this Pennsylvania Dutch Inn.

Magdalena has grown up in a Mennonite family in this Amish small town of Hernia.  She inherited this house and now runs it as a B&B with her aunt Freni cooking in the kitchen.
In previous books these characters have been developed and details of their background has been elaborated  on.  In this book we find Mags with a full house, including a Hollywood couple and gym teacher.  She tries to help her guests get the full Amish country experience, including paying extra to help clean, cook and even gather the eggs from the hens.  At the same time she is trying to help solve the murder of town

Her sister, Susannah,  is married to the Police Chief, Melvin Stoltzfus, who is very busy running his political campaign to get elected local councilman.  So he deputizes Mags to help him discover the killer of both Lizzie Mast and then the subsequent death of Thelma Hershberger.  Lizzie Mast was a friend but it is well known she was a terrible cook.  But why would anyone want to kill her?  Then it is even more complicated when Thelma is killed and we need to figure out how they were connected.

This just another fun cozy mystery that will keep you warm and comfortable as you read this formulaic novel and then you can eat some delicious comfort food as you eat some crepes with a variety of fillings. 

Tamar Myers likes to write these simple cozy formulaic style mysteries and she has a following for this series and her other antique dealer series also.  This Pennsylvanian Dutch series with recipes now has twenty one books.

More interesting might be that she is also writing a Belgian Congo mystery series, about which she has quite a bit of knowledge because she grew up there in the village of a headhunters.  Her parents were missionaries and her childhood sounds incredible.  I will possibly try and read one of the books in this series.