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November 22, 2002/Kislev 17 5763, Vol. 55, No. 13
Books are meant to be shared
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
Good books, like good food and good wine, are often best when shared by family and friends. Perhaps that's why we are often so quick to recommend a good read or pass on an especially enjoyable page-turner. That's also why groups of Valley residents gather regularly to talk about what they are reading. (See related story page 10.) Incisive criticism abounds - as well as well as compelling real life insights. So what are the book lovers reading these days? Following, three selections from local book clubs that fill the bill for good reading and interesting conversation.
Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: A Novel," (Picador USA, $15 paperback) became a blockbuster when first issued in 2000 and then garnering the Pulitzer for literature. It's a novel of epic proportions, artfully weaving in a number of themes to create a compelling story, replete with sympathetic characters and places of particularly Jewish interest. Sweeping from Eastern Europe during the Holocaust to New York in the post-war years, the book tells the story of two cousins who make good in America while navigating the complex social terrain. Both are spurred on by a desire to succeed, though Josef (or Joe as he becomes after arriving in New York), who loses his parents in the Holocaust, is driven by the dream of bringing his surviving younger brother to America's shores. Sam, struggling with his own identity, only wants to make it as a comic book artist, and, later, impresario.
The book is filled with characters anyone growing up in New York in that era could relate to - and surely any lover of old-fashioned comic books. Chabon's careful research of the genre is artfully incorporated in the sprawling work. But the novel is much, much more, engaging the reader on many levels. One local book club picked up on Chabon's theme of escape - young Joe, an aspiring magician, escapes from Hitler's clutches hidden in a Golem, arrives in New York when Houdini is the rage, and ends up with a sideline business doing magic tricks on the bar mitzvah circuit. His life becomes an imitation of his art - escaping and reappearing.
"The girls thought the theme of escape, both physical and psychological (was fascin-ating)," says Ellen Tuckman, who coordinates a Jewish Book Group for Brandeis University National Women's Committee. They also liked the setting.
"There was a lot about the Holocaust," says Tuckman, "there was a feeling of America in the forties and how people looked upon the Jews."
Another book that generated lots of interesting repartee was Tova Mirvis' "The Ladies Auxiliary" (Ballantine Readers Circle, $14 paperback). A contemporary novel set in Memphis, the book captures life in a small, Orthodox community. It turns on the story of Batsheva, a recently widowed convert to Judaism, who decides to move back to her late husband's community with her young daughter, Ayala, after his untimely death. What she finds is both a warm, tightly knit community of women (overseen by the esteemed Ladies Auxiliary) and a petty, judgmental one that is not as welcoming to outsiders as ideally prescribed by Judaism. Mirvis' writing style is unremarkable, a match for her fairly predictable storyline, but Batsheva becomes a sympathetic character, keeping readers engaged.
For Hadassah's Jewish Book Group, "Ladies Auxiliary" sparked a lively discussion about Orthodox Jewish observance. The book chronicles Batsheva's life as it cycles through the Jewish year, replete with descriptions of preparations and rituals. For the non-observant Jew, it provides an inside view into Orthodox life.
"We could have been all day with that book," says Davi Weinberg, who leads the group. "Everybody related to it."
Another popular choice is Martin Goldsmith's "The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany" (John Wiley & Sons, $24.95 hard cover, $15.95 paperback). Goldsmith retells the story of his parents, Gunther and Rosemarie Goldschmidt, who ultimately escaped from Nazi Germany to America and made a new life for themselves as George and Rosemary Goldsmith. Their tale is both a beautiful love story and a horror story as it recounts the budding romance between the two star-crossed lovers and the wrenching decisions they were forced to make to survive. It provides insights into life for German Jews under the Third Reich, the inability or desire not to see the dangers ahead, and the painful consequences that resulted for so many. Too, it deals with the difficulty of many Holocaust survivors to confront the past.
Goldsmith refers to one of the operas in Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle in the book's prelude to prepare the reader for what is to follow. He plays on Wagner's image of a tree with a golden sword embedded in its massive trunk.
Goldsmith writes, "In the house where I grew up with my father, my mother and my brother, there was also an enormous tree growing up through the roof, its great trunk dominating the enclosed space. In many ways we shared a perfectly ordinary family life. My father spoke to my mother. My mother tucked me in at night. My brother and I played with each other, when we weren't fighting. But none of us ever acknowledged that tree.
"The tree wasn't real, of course," Goldsmith goes on, "but its ominous presence, symbolizing the tragic fate of his parents' families in the Holocaust, cast a continuing shadow."
Goldsmith's book seeks to dig up its roots and recover the golden sword in the story of his parent's courage and persistence.
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