Acquired Book By: I am a regular tour hostess for blog tours via Cedar Fort whereupon I am thankful to have such a diverse amount of novels and non-fiction titles to choose amongst to host. I received a complimentary copy of “Enslaved to Saved” direct from the publisher CFI (imprint of Cedar Fort, Inc) in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
On why I elected to read Enslaved to Saved:
The title of this book implored me outright to become interested in reading it as I have had a curiosity to uncover more about Christ (as a man as much as the Son of God) in regards to who He was whilst He lived on earth and how the legacy of His teachings left behind for us to find after He left. On a similar vein, Mum and I have wanted to dig inside the women of the Bible, to uncover more biographical bits about who they were and the lives they lived because too often we only get to know fragmented pieces about the men and women who lived centuries ago yet who have such a crucial part of our shared religious history. As far as the women go, I know we want to seek out Biblical Historical fiction as a gateway, but when I saw this non-fiction release about Christ, it was definitely a moment where I felt as if I had stumbled across a book I was meant to read ‘at this moment in time’.
This thought-provoking book examines the cultural and political background of slavery during the time of Christ and what it means to our modern-day commitment to the Lord.
Where our King James New Testament reads "servant of Christ", the original Greek translates to "slave of Christ." This nuance will change how you read the New Testament.
*Unlock the deeper meanings of the Savior's most beloved parables
*Discover how the early Saints viewed their relationship to Christ
*Explore the difference between servitude and slavery in several well-known verses
Reid Litchfield, a Harvard-trained endocrinologist and longtime gospel scholar, shows how you can become a slave to Christ and paradoxically free yourself from the captivity of sin and death.
W. Reid Litchfield is an endocrinologist from Henderson, Nevada. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University (B.S.) and University of Calgary (M.D.) and completed his endocrinology fellowship at Harvard Medical School. In addition to a number of scientific publications he has published medical history papers entitled On The Physical Death Of Jesus Christ and The Bittersweet Demise of Herod the Great. He is the recipient of numerous Top Doctor awards as well as professional awards for leadership in his community and medical society.
I was selected to be a tour stop on the “The Angel of Losses” virtual book tour through TLC Book Tours. I received a complimentary ARC copy of the book direct from the publisher Ecco, in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
Inspired to Read:
I am always seeking stories which will challenge my mind and take me somewhere completely outside of where I have travelled before in literature. I had a sense that this was a story that I would devour — a story which would alight inside the vast plane of my imagination and give me something hearty to chew on afterwards. It was a premonition of a reaction long before the ARC ever arrived by Post. Do you ever find yourself stumbling across an author or a novel that you simply ‘know’ will leave an etched impression on your mind?! This is what I felt when I read the premise of Feldman’s novel and as I read the final words cast on the final page of the last chapter, I knew my premonition was true.
A notation on the cover art design:
The cover art for The Angel of Losses is a mosaic of the visual representations and clues of where the story leads you to follow it’s epic conclusion and of whom you need to pay particular attention to as the story evolves. Pictorial stimulating clues that you will only recognise as you alight on the pages in which give you the insight to understand the circle of their presence. The story is nearly a riddle when all is said and told – a riddle of a theory and a puzzle of an ancient truth aligning forward out of history.
The Tiger’s Wife meets A History of Love in this inventive, lushly imagined debut novel that explores the intersections of family secrets, Jewish myths, the legacy of war and history, and the bonds between sisters.
When Eli Burke dies, he leaves behind a mysterious notebook full of stories about a magical figure named The White Rebbe, a miracle worker in league with the enigmatic Angel of Losses, protector of things gone astray, and guardian of the lost letter of the alphabet, which completes the secret name of God.
When his granddaughter, Marjorie, discovers Eli’s notebook, everything she thought she knew about her grandfather—and her family—comes undone. To find the truth about Eli’s origins and unlock the secrets he kept, she embarks on an odyssey that takes her deep into the past, from 18th century Europe to Nazi-occupied Lithuania, and back to the present, to New York City and her estranged sister Holly, whom she must save from the consequences of Eli’s past.
Interweaving history, theology, and both real and imagined Jewish folktales, The Angel of Losses is a family story of what lasts, and of what we can—and cannot—escape.
Author Biography: Stephanie Feldman is a graduate of Barnard College. She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and her daughter.
Elements of Folklore, Mythology, & the Craft of Stories within a Story:
One of the most beautiful additions to a story I am reading is the otherworld presence of either folklore, mythology, or the craft of how stories are told as they are passed down from one generation to another; oft-times referred to by myself as ‘living histories’ as they truly are ‘the living history’ of a particular family. Inside Feldman’s novel, you gather a proper sense of time, place, and the stability of connection between the sisters and their grandfather was unified through the genesis of his art for story-telling. Their connective bond was untethered as they grew apart as they aged, but what I loved is seeing how the grandfather’s stories took such a central focus and method of shifting the story forward as I read deeper into the novel itself. To the level that his handwritten stories and prose scribbled into his notebooks were shared with the reader from one chapter into another. It felt very natural to go from an ordinary day out of Marjorie’s life, straight into a piece of this story she only had a peripheral knowledge of before finding one of her beloved grandfather’s notebooks.
My Review of The Angel of Losses:
Such a haunting and riveting opening of a Prologue for The Angel of Losses as we are caught inside of a memory of two sisters who are transfixed and spellbound by their grandfather’s tale of a land far away where a magician knows part of the truth of a missing son of a King. What implored me forward from there is this sense of foreboding, where did the tale leave off from the lore of the bedtime story and where did reality step forward out of the tale? I love feeling an undercurrent of suspense when I read a novel, and as this is my second Magical Realism with an under thread connection to Judaism (as the first was The Golem and the Jinni) I was mesmerized! Entering the story out of the Prologue, time has shifted forward for both sisters, as Holly (the one who was horridly afraid of her Grandfather’s story) switched religions and lived an orthodox life whereas her sister had grown into a bittersweet version of her younger self soured on how the loss of her sister has affected her heart. Her sister is still living, mind you, but the version of Holly as an adult is a far cry from the sister Marjorie knew as a child. The two are living worlds apart rather than mere blocks or cities separated by streets and the swirl of modern life between them.
I loved seeing the larger sense of their familial bond being tested by how one half of their connection is being shattered by the inability to have compassion outside of religious grounds. In this instance, I am referring to Holly’s husband is not accustomed to a non-Jewish family nor does he condone non-religious texts inside his home. A home that was inherited to Marjorie but on loan to Holly; the mere fact that Marjorie has to refer to Holly as Chava is another wrinkling thread of Marjorie’s disfavour of Holly’s choice in husband. You gather the sense at this point in the story where Marjorie is attempting to lock a hold of her past into her present, that the sister’s disconnection was already occurring long before Holly made her choice in marriage. There is an absence of words and an absence of sisterly compassion between both of them, and it points to a larger issue at hand that is slowly unfolding in the narrative itself. I like being caught up inside of a family drama, watching everything unravell as the story unfolds on its own timeclock.
Feldman has a gift for narrative voice stemming out of a wordsmith’s spirited soul for visceral imagery – she innately has gifted us with a special treat of a story, giving us a full-on adventure as we hug to the coattails of Marjorie as she pieces together the legacy and the history of a fabled Magician and the true meaning behind where the lore was always meant to take a believer; the latter of which she never felt she could ascertain on her own behalf. It is a true quandary of a problem – how to root out the history of a theory she has nibbling inside her own mind which other scholars were equally mystified about themselves? Her journey towards understanding edges her further into the mythes and pathos of ancient ruminations.
There are moments whilst I am reading I have gathered a proper sense on how each novel I consume is a building block for another yet to be known novel I will pick up in the future. As if I were stitching a tapestry woven exclusively with the threads and stitches of knowledge itself and of wisdom flowing out of the stories by which have enchanted my mind and enraptured my heart. Each story which slips into my mind’s eye has allowed me to grow, to transcend where I was before I read the story and to appreciate a bit more than I had already before the characters had lived their lives as a shadowy presence inside my own spirit. As I went deeper inside this story, I noticed little nuances of memory flittering through my internal memory files; automatically opening, closing, and filtering as I read Feldman’s prose. I had not realised I had amassed enough knowledge of the religious past to propel myself forward through this story at such an alarming clip of a pace! I cannot wait to re-read this novel when time is not extinguishing off the clock whilst a deadline was passed and overdue.
The researcher in me was happily appreciating the sections devouted to Marjorie’s attempt to research her thesis as much as research further into the legacy of her grandfather’s story. As she was always on the brink of realising that the story itself was much more than it first appeared to be. Being hunkered inside a library, piles of books atop of a table, and pages littered with bookmarks, post-it notes, and notebooks clotted full of scribbled ‘spur of the moment’ notes is what makes my own writerly heart go aflutter! Research is in part how I fell in love with writing, and it is research of another writer I treasure whilst I am reading their own stories cast out into the world for us to find. There is an electricity of excitement reading The Angel of Losses,…
At some point I started to read on autopilot, willing myself past sleep and choking myself a bit on exhaustion, but I simply needed to know how this story, this novel was going to end. I was a bit worried it might end on a cliffhanger, as I never take too kindly to ambiguous endings of stories; especially without the foreknowledge of a pending sequel. Two hours blinked off the clock and I’m at a loss for words — I’m so absorbed into this story, I feel as though I am the one pursuing the research to understand what is just outside of my own memory. This story is not like any other I’ve read and I will never quite forget it either. It is meant to be absorbed and illuminated inside the reader’s mind without revealing everything to the next reader who comes across it. For each of us has to read it ourselves and satisfy our own curiosity,… especially if we’re a seeker of stories and understand the greater meaning of what stories can give us all.
Stephanie Feldman gives her readers a window into a portal of time:
We are stepping through a veil slit into a portal of time made available through an opened window which is the novel inside your hands as your reading The Angel of Losses. Two stories came to mind as I started to read this fantastical journey: The Golem and the Jinni (novel) and The Neverending Story (film) as they are akin to how it feels to step through this world Feldman has provided us to discover. She gave us the same vehicle Bastian had in The Neverending Story, to become one within the story as it unfolded and to live as one with the character as she found where she was going herself. I loved this aspect of the novel because all of reality around me dissolved as I was wholly consumed by the voice of the evoking narrator and the clarity of Feldman’s vision for this unique novel which bent genre and illuminated the world half out of mystic history and half out of the truism of where faith can take anyone if only they were to believe in what is not yet seen.
On the footheels of consuming The Ghost Bride, I felt honoured to have had the chance to read Feldman’s tome of esoteric concentration of mystic Judaism cross-sected with religious ancient truths. The suspension of reality and the generous backstories of where the mytho origins of the story can be traced was a treasurement to fall in front of my eyes. I devourted this novel as readily as if I were astride a thunderbolt – even knowing I was outside my intended deadline (as the moon had long since waned and the midnight hours had tilted into a crescendo) I could not yield to sleep. I had to consume the text as quickly as I could process the words on the pages themselves, as my mind was lit aflame by the creativity and the ingenuity of how the historical arc was interlaced into the present of the character’s lives.
Fly in the Ointment:
I counted the words this time and there were less than a dozen splintered out across the whole of the novel. I wasn’t happy to find them; this is an intellectually stimulating piece of literary fiction and they felt misplaced amongst the rhetoric. I am not even sure why they were included in such a brilliant spec of literary voice. They degraded the quality in my eyes, as not only could this stomach their expulsion it was necessary to keep in tact the gift Feldman had writ.
A small explanation on my tardiness:
I had lost hours whilst being needed at the hospital in visitation of my neighbour (as previously disclosed here & here) as much as I was out of the house on another appointment that could not be detained. I attempted to revive the lost hours and run into my deadline without passing through it — but alas, I am quite human and not as immortal as the character inside this novel. Time can be bent but time cannot be recaptured once lost. I apologise for the delayed response, but my tweeting at least was a small clue at my enjoyment whilst I read. I am attempting to make the rest of my scheduled book reviews & tour stops to be alight earlier in the day / evenings from here on out; barring any further unexpected life emergencies, crises, or unplanned events such as lightning storms.
I positively *love!* comments in the threads below each of my posts, and although I had happily made sure that I could reacquire the WP Comments where you can leave me a comment by using: WP (WordPress), Twitter, Facebook, Google+, & Email a java glitch disrupted my plans to have these activated! Therefore, I had to re-instate CommentLuv, which only requires Email to leave a note for me!
Kindly know that I appreciate each thought you want to share with me and all the posts on my blog are open to new comments & commentary! Short or long, I appreciate the time you spent to leave behind a note of your visit! Return again soon!
Reader Interactive Question:
Have you ever alighted inside of a novel that you unexpectedly were swallowed up inside? Taken root inside the shoes of the character, where their life was full of emotional upheaval and partially an exploration of how to create a life shift that will alleviate their disillusion with where their life was heading; to find a different way of living and carve out their own little peace of happiness? Did you ever read a novel that surprised you?
{SOURCES: Cover art of “The Angel of Losses”, author photograph, book synopsis and the tour badge were all provided by TLC Book Tours and used with permission. Blog Tour badge provided by Parajunkee to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. Bookish Events badge created by Jorie in Canva. Post dividers by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination.}
I was selected to be a tour stop on the “The Duel for Consuelo” virtual book tour through Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours. I received a complimentary copy of the book direct from the author Claudia H. Long, in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
History, love, and faith combine in a gripping novel set in early 1700’s Mexico. In this second passionate and thrilling story of the Castillo family, the daughter of a secret Jew is caught between love and the burdens of a despised and threatened religion. The Enlightenment is making slow in-roads, but Consuelo’s world is still under the dark cloud of the Inquisition. Forced to choose between protecting her ailing mother and the love of dashing Juan Carlos Castillo, Consuelo’s personal dilemma reflects the conflicts of history as they unfold in 1711 Mexico.
A rich, romantic story illuminating the timeless complexities of family, faith, and love.
Claudia Long is a highly caffeinated, terminally optimistic married lady living in Northern California. She writes about early 1700’s Mexico and modern day and roaring 20′s California. Claudia practices law as a mediator for employment disputes and business collapses, has two formerly rambunctious–now grown kids, and owns four dogs and a cat. Her first mainstream novel was Josefina’s Sin, published by Simon & Schuster in 2011. Her second one, The Harlot’s Pen, was published with Devine Destinies in February 2014. Claudia grew up in Mexico City and New York, and she now lives in California.
The breadth of history knitted into the text:
I will admit, part of the reason I was drawn into reading this novel, is because although I have travelled to Mexico in my youth, I haven’t had the proper chance to seek out Mexican stories in fiction since the days I spent climbing pyramids and enjoying the local cuisine. I always appreciate stories whose characters are not only culturally diverse but religiously diverse as well – we live in such a beautiful melting pot of a world, that through literature we can all enlarge our compassion and empathy for others simply by picking up books whose characters have strong historically enriched backgrounds and are set during times in the world’s history that may or may not be highlighted in schools. I will admit, very little was covered about the Mexican history concurrent to the Americas time-line, outside of the more well-known events that are briefly covered. I was always a bit curious about our neighbour to the South, wondering about their own historical stories and the growth they had endured as their country grew through the centuries. I thankfully have started to make a bit of headway on my quest to seek out literature of Mexico and South America, as I previously read City of Promises.
I made an exception to read this novel out of sequence from its series, as when I read the full descriptions of the previous novel and cross-compared it with this novel, I felt this second novel was a better fit for me overall. I liked how the story was centered around a tumultuous slice of history with the family’s struggle for balance in a world that is fighting against their very will to find a measure of normalcy.
My Review of The Duel for Consuelo:
As soon as I opened the pages of The Duel for Consuelo, I was greeted by a passionate story-teller who wanted to not only impart the history of the time the story is set but to curate a connective thread to the family within the story itself. In the Prologue, there is a full sense of urgency to gain freedom on distant shores where both time and distance can help restore a blight on a family’s heritage moreso than staying where they have always lived. In this story, there appeared to be an issue of religious heritage that was giving the family a bit of grief, but as the next generation moved forward with their own life lived in the Americas, a sense of compassionate forgiveness was evident as was the hope for a new day for a family I had just barely begun to become acquainted with as the clock moved forward a century.
Yet, as I am settling into the story, the voice of Rosa’s granddaughter comes out quite strong as the narrative vehicle for which this story revolves; through her eyes it is evident that compassion and acceptance is still quite far away from being given. Through her maternal line of origin there is a history of Judaism, a reverence for Jewish culture and faith which is not aligning well for her family during the Spanish Inquisition. Her father comes across rather bearish as his ideal capitalistic pursuits are less shallow than his vain attempts to clarify his role in the community. Consuelo herself feels pulled through this duality of purpose – to be the daughter her father can be proud of and the caregiver of her mother, whose health is not as well as it had been in previous years. She is tied to the home, yet her dreams carry her outside the walls as she goes about her daily routines.
The most sinister moment was when it was revealed that despite her father’s efforts to quiet a blackmailer, his efforts were found out and his family was thus unprotected by the wrath of justice that would follow if he did not find a way to amend for his actions. This was a curious sideline of the opening structure of the story, as he barely agreed to the blackmail on one breath and he was found in the wrong on the next. I had almost felt that this might have carried forward as a dark secret for the duration of the story, but instead, it flickered and died.
Consuelo’s own gift was in her nurturing attentiveness to those who were ill and her maternal instincts to care for those who needed assistance. Although, I gathered she would have preferred to do more in her life than care for her mother, it was in so doing that she learnt her greatest gift was in the understanding of apothecarist healing practices and the strength of herbs. Her life was overshadowed by the forbearing presence of her father, a man who ruled his roost with a strong hand, and yet, never gave much consequence to his daughter or wife. He was much more interested in keeping up the appearance of who they were rather than being honest inside his relationships and business affairs. How she found the strength to rise above each adverse and brutal moment of shocking distrust is a credit to her confidence in herself. She was not dealt an easy life nor one that aligned with how she believed her life would fall together – in life as in love, she was betrayed and it was through anguish she started to rise again.
Her father’s inability to forestall the Inquisition’s ransom and blackmail demands (although earlier I felt they were relieved of) played a larger part of the trials in which Consuelo found herself in the middle of succumbing. Her life was not necessarily her own, and her choices although valid in their own right, rarely had the light to shine on their own accord. The most distraught part of the story is watching Consuelo attempt to right her stars only be dragged by through the mud carved out of her father’s transactions and misdirections of attempting to escape a worser fate. She was used as though she were a pawn, and despite that, she always had the hope for a future she could no longer envision probable. The acidity of rumours and insinuated falsehoods plagued her from the very start, as where truth and lies forged together as though welded in steel, it is within this nest of vipers Consuelo truly had to find a sword stronger than her entangled woes.
On the writing style of Claudia H. Long:
Long tells the story from different points of view which lately I am appreciating being given the opportunity to read with such frequency; as I originally only occasionally had come across this style of the craft. Each sequence is broken down into each of the character’s mindfulness of the events or the daily trials as they arise. As you shift through their connective chapters, you draw out more insight into how the family structure is maintained and who has the keener knowledge of what is actually going on. The ailing mother for instance is given reflective chapters where you are reading her internal thoughts rather than her spoken words in the moment. This is a bridge to understand and accept her husband and daughter, as she is revealing a bit of the unspoken truths that the other two leave amiss.
Long has infused her historical novel with such a breadth of history, you cannot help but acknowledge the dedication she had to researching this part of Mexico’s 17th and 18th Century past. She stitches into the everyday dialogue bits and bobbles of Spanish as well, and as I always lament, I appreciate when a native tongue can be included as it helps to strengthen the picture we have in our mind of the characters whose heritage is not only important to their identity but helps visualise who they are as they live inside the story.
The story is truly emotionally gutting in its intensity throughout the narrative arc, as the story is rooted in the historical knowledge of the time in which the events unfold. The brutal injustice and the prejudicial judgments of those who did not understand a different in faith and belief is quite shocking to read; even if the knowledge of the era is already known. The hardest part for me, was shifting through the more difficult passages to entreat back into the light and to see where Consuelo found her resolve and the strength to carry-on. I credit this to Long who gave her readers resolution even with the realisation that many might not have found the same in real life.
Virtual Road Map of “The Duel for Consuelo” Blog Tour found here:
see what I will be hosting next for
and mark your calendars!
{SOURCES: Cover art of “The Duel for Consuelo”, author photograph, book synopsis and the tour badge were all provided by Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours and used with permission. Blog Tour badge provided by Parajunkee to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. Bookish Events badge created by Jorie in Canva. Post dividers by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination.}
Acquired Book By:I was selected to be a tour stop on the “Love & Treasure” virtual book tour through HFVBT: Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours. I received a complimentary hardback copy of the book direct from the publisher Alfred A. Knof, in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
Book Synopsis:
A spellbinding new novel of contraband masterpieces, tragic love, and the unexpected legacies of forgotten crimes, Ayelet Waldman’s Love and Treasure weaves a tale around the fascinating, true history of the Hungarian Gold Train in the Second World War.
In 1945 on the outskirts of Salzburg, victorious American soldiers capture a train filled with unspeakable riches: piles of fine gold watches; mountains of fur coats; crates filled with wedding rings, silver picture frames, family heirlooms, and Shabbat candlesticks passed down through generations. Jack Wiseman, a tough, smart New York Jew, is the lieutenant charged with guarding this treasure—a responsibility that grows more complicated when he meets Ilona, a fierce, beautiful Hungarian who has lost everything in the ravages of the Holocaust. Seventy years later, amid the shadowy world of art dealers who profit off the sins of previous generations, Jack gives a necklace to his granddaughter, Natalie Stein, and charges her with searching for an unknown woman—a woman whose portrait and fate come to haunt Natalie, a woman whose secret may help Natalie to understand the guilt her grandfather will take to his grave and to find a way out of the mess she has made of her own life.
A story of brilliantly drawn characters—a suave and shady art historian, a delusive and infatuated Freudian, a family of singing circus dwarfs fallen into the clutches of Josef Mengele, and desperate lovers facing choices that will tear them apart—Love and Treasure is Ayelet Waldman’s finest novel to date: a sad, funny, richly detailed work that poses hard questions about the value of precious things in a time when life itself has no value, and about the slenderest of chains that can bind us to the griefs and passions of the past.
Praise on behalf of the novel:
“Love and Treasure is something of a treasure trove of a novel. Its beautifully integrated parts fit inside one another like the talismanic pendant/ locket at the heart of several love stories. Where the opening chapters evoke the nightmare of Europe in the aftermath of World War II with the hallucinatory vividness of Anselm Kiefer’s disturbing canvases, the concluding chapters, set decades before, in a more seemingly innocent time in the early 20th century, are a bittersweet evocation, in miniature, of thwarted personal destinies that yet yield to something like cultural triumph. Ayelet Waldman is not afraid to create characters for whom we feel an urgency of emotion, and she does not resolve what is unresolvable in this ambitious, absorbing and poignantly moving work of fiction.”
—Joyce Carol Oates
Author Biography:
Ayelet Waldman is the author of the newly released Love and Treasure (Knopf, January 2014), Red Hook Road and The New York Times bestseller Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace. Her novel Love and Other Impossible Pursuits was made into a film starring Natalie Portman. Her personal essays and profiles of such public figures as Hillary Clinton have been published in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Vogue, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Her radio commentaries have appeared on “All Things Considered” and “The California Report.”
For more information please visit Ayelet’s website . Her missives also appear on Facebook and Twitter.
Her books are published throughout the world, in countries as disparate as England and Thailand, the Netherlands and China, Russia and Israel, Korea and Italy.
My Review of Love & Treasure:
Of all the ways in which I had an illusion of how this novel would open and begin, I think the first paragraph for me was an eye opener, as it did not quite match where my mind felt this novel would start. The rest of the first page was a bit jolting as well, as I found I had trouble finding my feet in the narrative. Where I thought the narrative voice would be empathic and soft, I found myself reading a sharpened edge of sound and vision. When Waldman starts to focus on the heart of the story centered around the lost possessions and valuable heirlooms of the Jewish families from World War II, her writing finds its clarity and knits together in a way that is a bit more fluid for me than the opening bits of dialogue being exchanged between a grand-daughter and her grand-father. She writes more into the historical bits than the everyday moments, which lends me to thinking her writing voice is hitched inside the historical elements to where she could write full-on historicals without the modern era attached.
The most tender scenes were exchanged between Jack Wiseman and Ilona Jakab, as each of them during the war were attempting to keep their sanity intact by not losing their humanity. Wiseman deferred to showing kindness during the rehousing of those who were returning from internment camps, and Ilona was electing to show her true strength and spirit, but deflecting her fears as she interacted with Wiseman. I appreciated how they met quite accidentally due to the train Wiseman was in charge of shifting its cargo to a warehouse. It reminded me a bit of a ‘meet cute’ in motion picture, despite the tragedy of their paths crossing during the Allied Occupation of Hungry. They each took each other by a surprise which refreshed their spirits and gave a kind grace to their situations.
I kept finding myself falling in and out of step with this story, because I am not one for crude humour nor crude expressions, and as I tried to continue to read the story with an open mind towards the time and era the story is set, I kept finding myself wishing Waldman had chosen different ways to express what was happening. I have read plenty of stories set during both World Wars, and the writers were not buckling down to this level of bare boned narration. The bits and bobbles I appreciated were starting to grow pale against the increasing tide of what either made me flinch or had my eyes adverting reading the paragraphs completely.
For me the story is told in a bit of a gritty and stark reality vein of dialogue and narrative voice; which made this difficult to read for my own readings tend to be towards a different vein of tact. I appreciate stories set during the wars, as war dramas and war romances are ones I tend to gravitate towards, but there is something different inside this one. I felt there was an undertone that I could not quite put my finger on but it wasn’t something that I felt I wanted to continue to read. I left the story fully intact without reaching the middle because to do so would have not proved enjoyable. I believe this story is best for readers who can appreciate the tone and dictation of action with a language presence that would not affect someone as much as it did me. I was truly disappointed as I was hoping to discover a historical mystery inside of a war drama; leading me through passages of research and provenance of personal property and giving me a historical epic of humanity.
Fly in the Ointment:
There are times where I give a pass on vulgarity but in this particular instance, the inclusion of strong language does not sit well with me because I could think of at least a handful of expressions or phrases to elicit the same manner of empathsis as found on page 6. The most obvious word instead is ‘muddled’. I am not an advocate for vulgarity in literature, and the few times I have given leeway to an author’s choice of inclusion is few and far between; the reasons were valid and if you go through the “Topics, Subjects, & Genres” cloud in the lower sidebar area of my blog, you will discover the reasons why I find strong language offensive and why in certain instances I did not wrinkle a brow over them. This novel kept pushing my envelope for tolerance.
I happen to know a bit about the setting of the story (the state of Maine) and what disrupted me a bit were the observations knitted into the backdrop, most especially about Bangor. I found myself with conflicting information, to where I was thinking to myself, that’s not true! The way in which Maine is represented in the book and specifics such as only one restaurant is open in Bangor during the long Winter months, in all honesty surprised me? I felt like there was a ‘fictional’ representation of Maine happening in this book, rather than an honest window into life in Maine.
{SOURCES: Book cover for “Love & Treasure”, Author Biography, Book Synopsis, and the quoted praise by Joyce Carol Oates were provided by HFVBT – Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours and used with permission. Author Interview badge provided by Parajunkee to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. Post dividers badge by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. The book trailer for “Love & Treasure” via KnopfDoubleday had either URL share links or coding which made it possible to embed this media portal to this post, and I thank them for the opportunity to share more about this novel and the author who penned it. Bookish Events badge created by Jorie in Canva.}
Around the time I was asked if I wanted to join the blog tour for Love & Treasure, I was attempting to decide if I wanted to watch the motion picture Monument Men as previously I have found that war-time dramas can be a bit too much for my heart to handle. I thoroughly loved Tea with Mussolini and Life is Beautiful, although Saving Private Ryan pushed me past my edge. In recent years, I have appreciated the BBC tv series Foyle’s War, eagerly awaiting the next seasons to come through my local library who purchases them on seasonal dvd! It is such a blessing to be able to watch an historically enriched series, set during the war, and is full of characters who draw empathy into their characters as they give us a piece of what that particular portion of British life and history were during those turbulent times. Likewise, I have always been struck with curiosity about what became of the family heirlooms and personal effects which were stolen and taken away from them by the regime. It was such a darkened part of history, but there are moments of strength inside of the darkness as well. There was something stitched inside the premise of this story that spoke to me, and it was a story I wanted to read most surely!
I wanted to interview the author herself to see what inspired her to take on the subject matter and to get to know a bit more about her as a woman behind the pen, so to speak! I do hope you enjoy my questions and will be intrigued to visit with me again, as I share my thoughts and observations as I read the novel this week!
A bit of a note on why I included the quote by Ms. Oates: I’ve been attempting to read through The Accursed since I first discovered it through the library last year. Time sweeps me away, I fear, but the manner in which Ms. Oates composes her thoughts and paints the portraits of her stories has staid with me! I felt compelled to share her thoughts on behalf of this story, even though I typically do not post well-known quotations of reviews for the books I blog about myself.
Book Synopsis:
A spellbinding new novel of contraband masterpieces, tragic love, and the unexpected legacies of forgotten crimes, Ayelet Waldman’s Love and Treasure weaves a tale around the fascinating, true history of the Hungarian Gold Train in the Second World War.
In 1945 on the outskirts of Salzburg, victorious American soldiers capture a train filled with unspeakable riches: piles of fine gold watches; mountains of fur coats; crates filled with wedding rings, silver picture frames, family heirlooms, and Shabbat candlesticks passed down through generations. Jack Wiseman, a tough, smart New York Jew, is the lieutenant charged with guarding this treasure—a responsibility that grows more complicated when he meets Ilona, a fierce, beautiful Hungarian who has lost everything in the ravages of the Holocaust. Seventy years later, amid the shadowy world of art dealers who profit off the sins of previous generations, Jack gives a necklace to his granddaughter, Natalie Stein, and charges her with searching for an unknown woman—a woman whose portrait and fate come to haunt Natalie, a woman whose secret may help Natalie to understand the guilt her grandfather will take to his grave and to find a way out of the mess she has made of her own life.
A story of brilliantly drawn characters—a suave and shady art historian, a delusive and infatuated Freudian, a family of singing circus dwarfs fallen into the clutches of Josef Mengele, and desperate lovers facing choices that will tear them apart—Love and Treasure is Ayelet Waldman’s finest novel to date: a sad, funny, richly detailed work that poses hard questions about the value of precious things in a time when life itself has no value, and about the slenderest of chains that can bind us to the griefs and passions of the past.
Praise on behalf of the novel:
“Love and Treasure is something of a treasure trove of a novel. Its beautifully integrated parts fit inside one another like the talismanic pendant/ locket at the heart of several love stories. Where the opening chapters evoke the nightmare of Europe in the aftermath of World War II with the hallucinatory vividness of Anselm Kiefer’s disturbing canvases, the concluding chapters, set decades before, in a more seemingly innocent time in the early 20th century, are a bittersweet evocation, in miniature, of thwarted personal destinies that yet yield to something like cultural triumph. Ayelet Waldman is not afraid to create characters for whom we feel an urgency of emotion, and she does not resolve what is unresolvable in this ambitious, absorbing and poignantly moving work of fiction.”
—Joyce Carol Oates
Author Biography:
Ayelet Waldman is the author of the newly released Love and Treasure (Knopf, January 2014), Red Hook Road and The New York Times bestseller Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace. Her novel Love and Other Impossible Pursuits was made into a film starring Natalie Portman. Her personal essays and profiles of such public figures as Hillary Clinton have been published in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Vogue, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Her radio commentaries have appeared on “All Things Considered” and “The California Report.”
For more information please visit Ayelet’s website . Her missives also appear on Facebook and Twitter.
Her books are published throughout the world, in countries as disparate as England and Thailand, the Netherlands and China, Russia and Israel, Korea and Italy.
Your novel “Love and Treasure” encompasses such a gutting time in our historical past and touches on such a unique sliver of World War II history. How did the early conception of the story alight in your heart and how did it affect you on a personal level going through the research straight through until you wrote the last chapter?
Waldman responds: I have always been interested in literature of the Holocaust. That period looms in the imagination of American Jews, so many of whom feel that our survival was a matter of chance – immigration at the right moment. I have read in my my life probably hundreds of books, both fiction and non, about the Holocaust, many of which were the worst kind of Holocaust kitsch. You know, the story of the one good German. But the books that are good, books like W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz or Primo Levi’s memoirs, changed how I looked at my life and my world.
Writing this novel was emotionally difficult. I remember at one point my husband said to me, after a dinner party, “Sweetie, I love you, but not every conversation has to be a conversation about Treblinka.” I had to learn how to compartmentalize.
Did you find it difficult at all to shift between the time settings of the book? As you go both forward and backward in the narrative in order to best tell the story as it evolves?
Waldman responds: Not at all. This was one of the delights of writing this book. Obviously it required a tremendous amount of research, and also a tremendous amount of focus to keep the sections distinct in tone, but challenges like that are what make writing fun.
What do you feel is the hardest part about writing convicting historical fiction whose heart of story is rooted in a remembered part of our combined past?
Waldman responds: Not allowing your research to overwhelm the story. It’s so tempting to cram every single thing you’ve read or learned into the novel, because you spent so much time and effort on your research. But then the story takes second place to the research, and that’s neither interesting nor emotionally satisfying to the reader.
What do you think has led for this section of history to become re-examined both in fiction and in motion picture!? (i.e. Monument Men)
Waldman responds: I’ll tell you this much, from now on I’m going to insist that George Clooney make a movie tangentially related to all my forthcoming novels.
I suppose it’s because the last survivors are now nearing the ends of their lives and people want to capture their stories before it’s too late.
What has led you to soak into the historical fiction genre to such a passionate level and know that it is a niche you want to explore further!?
Waldman responds: It’s a challenge to write about a different time and place, and challenges are what make writing exciting.
You revealed settings for your second historical novel in a previous interview, what attracted you to the different time and locales you were referencing? (French Riviera before WWI; Hollywood 1940s & 1950s; and New England in the 1960s) You picked specific places and decades, which lent me to believe you had a particular attachment to those choices?
Waldman responds: My character in this one has a particular attachment. They are the times and places his life will lead him. But I don’t want to say more, because it’s tempting fate to discuss a work before it’s been fully realized.
Outside of the 20th Century, is there a moment in the folds of the historical past you might be curious to explore?
Waldman responds: Sure. But I don’t really know what yet. I do know that writing (and reading!) historical fiction is such a delight that I’ll definitely be returning to the genre.
Do you travel to destinations that are reminiscent of locales or scenes that are inside your novel(s)? Or is most of your research condensed to what you can draw out of materials outside of travelling? I think it works both ways personally, as not everyone can travel to each country or city where their novel is set.
Waldman responds: Oh absolutely. I love to travel. It’s one of my greatest pleasures. Being able to travel both enriches the novel and is one of the reasons for doing it. I set this book in Hungary because I wanted to go to Hungary!
What were your early influences and wanderings in literature!? Which authors spoke to you as far as a style of story-telling endeared itself to you ahead of creating your own stories? Are there any titles you could share which are still brought forward to mind in fond affection?
Waldman responds: I was a voracious reader as a child. In addition to novels and memoirs about the Holocaust (The Diary of Anne Frank, The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier) my favorites included Harriet the Spy and From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. All I did as a kid was read, gulping down books as many as one or two a day.
What was the impetus which gravitated you into writing? And, when did this occur? Who was your best cheerleader?
Waldman responds: I wanted to stop being a lawyer, and I’d always loved to read. My husband is a novelist, and I sort of thought, “Well, how hard can it really be?” Ha! He is no doubt my greatest cheerleader. He believed in me when no one else did.
What are your favourite tools to use whilst writing? And, where do you write to gain the most inspiration?
Waldman responds: I write anywhere. In my studio, in an office, at my kitchen table. I don’t believe in being too precious about it. I’m a terrible procrastinator and if I allow myself only to work in particular situations I won’t ever get anything done.
That being said, I love going to the MacDowell Colony. I get more done in that solitude than anywhere else on earth.
I write on a MacBook air using Scrivener. When I’m done, I put the document in Pages.
Outside the realm of writing and creating art, what enriches your spirit the most? Where do you find your serenity?
Waldman responds: I’m sort of a serenity-free zone. I’m always moving, always fretting. But I love my husband and kids. And my dog. If anything gives me serenity in life, it’s Mabel. She asks for nothing beyond a bowl of food and an occasional walk, and is always thrilled to see me.
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I am quite eager to share with you my ruminations on reading “Love & Treasure”!
{SOURCES: Book cover for “Love & Treasure”, Author Biography, Book Synopsis, and the quoted praise by Joyce Carol Oates were provided by HFVBT – Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours and used with permission. Author Interview badge provided by Parajunkee to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. Post dividers badge by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. In conjunction with reading the novel for review on behalf of HFVBTs, I wanted to interview Ms. Waldman get to know the writer behind the novel, as it is such a captivating slice of WWII history. My questions were sent to the author and received a reply through HFVBTs for which I am thankful.}