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.