Cathleen Schine takes the Covid pandemic head on in her new book, Kunstlers in Paradise.
A trip down memory lane for many of us who during the early days of the Covid pandemic either spent time with family we don’t usually get to live with or possibly ended up spending time somewhere we had not expected to be for longer than was the original plan.
That is how Julian Kunstler, the twenty something grandson ends up living with his grandmother Salomea Kunstler known to family as Mamie. Julian has suffered a severe blow when his girlfriend breaks up with him, his best friend and roommate decides to go to law school and leaves their shared apartment and the bookstore he has been working in closes its doors.
He is lost. His parents do not want him moving back in with them. He has no career ambition or direction.
When his grandmother Mamie breaks her wrist and needs a little assistance, Julian travels from New York City to Los Angeles to help out. He moves into Mamie’s guest house at her Venice beach bungalow. Thinking this is a stop over while he tries to find himself, Covid changes everything. Now he is stuck living with his 93 year old grandmother and Agatha her live-in assistant. Though it is a wonderful way to be isolated during the pandemic, Julian feels guilty that he is not suffering as much as his parents and friends in New York.
To pass the time Mamie starts to share stories of her life. She reminisces about leaving what the Kunstler family will remember as paradise, their home in Vienna, until 1939, Hitler marched into the city. The family came to America and settled in Los Angeles. Mamie was a youngster and traveled with her mother, father and grandfather.
The book tries to compare the horrific trauma of Mamie and her family leaving Europe and settling in America, being exiled to being unmoored during Covid. Leaving your home and not being able to return. Feeling guilty when you survive and others do not. Mamie quotes Christopher Isherwood: “I am bitterly ashamed that I am here in safety.”
Later Julian will also quote Isherwood when he meets Sophie, a fellow dog walker who lives across the street, as he walks his grandmother’s dog. They meet daily to walk the dogs on opposite sides of the street shouting to each other to converse. As they become friendlier, they meet on Sophie’s lawn with masks and Julian shares the stories his grandmother is telling him.
As the story develops we hear how Mamie and her family escaped Vienna and came to Venice CA. How her mother found work in Hollywood, her father a composer was not as successful and found this new country difficult to navigate. Her grandfather was her closest friend when Mamie was a child, they strolled the beach together and talked to people they met. She talks about the movie stars they knew. Julian writes it all down and thinks he may write a play based on Mamie’s story. He starts to enjoy hearing her remembrances about famous people like Greta Garbo and famous composer, Arnold Schoenberg. Mamie goes onto to become a violinist.
In this crazy tapestry of family life, we see how a family left a life they thought was paradise until it was no longer a place of beauty, to a place that tries hard to be paradise. We see how people can make a place a paradise when they need to find happiness during a difficult time fInding themselves and creating a happy life during hardship.
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