The River We Remember

The first book I read by William Kent Krueger was This Tender Land back in 2020. I obtained it from the facilitator of a formerly in person book club that is now online.  I also recently got The River We Remember, the subject of the current review, from that same facilitator. This particular book club is a longstanding commitment for me.  I appreciate that the facilitator makes books she receives from publishers available to members of the club.

                              

 It took me ten days to read The River We Remember.  That was twice as long as the last book I read.  I hope that doubling the amount of time I need to read a book doesn't become a trend.                                 

Jewel, the fictional town in Michigan where this novel took place,  had a book club that was in the process of reading Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.   I hadn't liked this book when I read it in high school.  I still remember it as an unpleasant experience.  I'm so glad I belong to a club that reads only mysteries and thrillers.  I wouldn't want to have to deal with Catcher in the Rye in a book club context.    

I was interested in the background of Marta, who was the wife of Jimmy Quinn, the victim in The River We Remember.  Marta was born in Germany.  Her parents were non-Jewish dissidents who were killed by the Nazi authorities for their political views.  Marta was related to Jimmy's first wife, Gudrun.  She sent for Marta because she was very ill and needed help.  Then Gudrun died soon after Marta arrived, and Marta married Jimmy a few months later. 

Charlotte Bauer, the attorney for the person who was charged with  murdering Jimmy Quinn,  also had an interesting background.  Charlotte's father didn't think that women needed an education. We are told about a childhood incident in which Charlotte was caught reading Jane Eyre by her father. They struggled over the book and Charlotte's father finally took it from her. 

I also have a personal story dealing with Jane Eyre. My father gave me my childhood copy of Jane Eyre. I paged through it and decided it was a horror novel because of the monstrous illustration of the wife hidden in the attic.  I was so terrified of that illustration that I didn't actually read Jane Eyre until I was an adult. 

I thought that one of the most admirable characters in The River We Remember was Kyoko Bluestone, the Japanese born wife of Native American Noah Bluestone.  Kyoko was widely hated in the town of Jewel for being Japanese in this post World War II novel.  Her inner strength in the face of terrible adversity was never shaken.

I liked The River We Remember.  I found it emotionally involving with some striking characters.  I think I'll give it a B.  

                                  

                                

  

Five Biblical Portraits by Elie Wiesel

I read Five Biblical Portraits because I'm interested in what Elie Wiesel had to say about the Bible.  I also wanted to find out more about him. I had read his book Night some time ago.  I know that Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor, but can't recall Night. So Five Biblical Portraits is a re-introduction to Elie Wiesel for me. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

                                   

The introduction by Ariel Burger tells us that Wiesel refers to the Holocaust as "the Kingdom of Night" which is poetic and doesn't sound anything like the soul destroying trauma that the Holocaust must have been for survivors.  Yet perhaps Wiesel needed to distance himself from his experience by using a euphemism like "Kingdom of Night". 

 I am a generation removed from the Holocaust, and my parents weren't themselves Holocaust survivors.  So most of my knowledge of the Holocaust comes from classes I have taken or books I've read. 

 In the "Joshua" essay, Wiesel claims that Jews have no tradition of writing songs to celebrate war.  It definitely seems to me that the Song of Deborah  from The Bible is a celebration of  war. Here is the actual text. 

I have to say that I have never been a fan of Saul.  He seems to have been the kind of king who only cared about maintaining his own power.  Wiesel obviously sympathized with him, but I don't find him persuasive.  Wiesel's portrayal of Saul convinced me that he may have been psychologically unstable.

 Wiesel wrote about the massacres at Babi Yar in the "Jeremiah" essay.  I had heard of Babi Yar, but my teachers never taught us where it's located.  I now know it's in Ukraine.

(A search for Babi Yar led me to the website of a Holocaust denier who is definitely a member of the lunatic fringe. I felt I needed mental floss after reading his fulminations.)

I will now get back to what has been written about Babi Yar.  When  author Anatoly Kuznetsov was born in Kiev, it was in the Soviet Union.  The Soviet Union no longer exists. Kiev is now the capital of Ukraine.  Kuznetsov wrote a novel called  Babi Yar  that dealt with the massacres. I am hoping to read this novel by a Ukrainian in the not too distant future.    

I have to say that I'm not overly fond of any of the Biblical personages in Five Biblical Portraits.   I will give this book three stars on Goodreads.