Judenstaat by Simone Zelitch-- Is a Just Jewish State Possible?

This is the second alternate Jewish state novel that I've read.  The first , The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon, came totally out of left field.  The Jewish State is where?  Alaska? Are you kidding me?  It was certainly imaginative, but it didn't seem at all likely.  Judenstaat at least sounds like it could really have happened in the universe next door, not very far from our own.   So I took this book and its implications more seriously.

                             

Many left of center American Jews are very critical of Israel.  They believe that it should be a more just state.  Let's leave aside the issue of whether there is anywhere that could be described as a completely just state in the real world.  Let us consider whether a Jewish state could be more just if it were not in Palestine. Let us suppose it could be situated in uncontested territory.  If so, where could such a place be located? There were real proposals to establish a Jewish state in Uganda or in Argentina.  Yet Zelitch decided to locate her fictional version in Europe.  In her universe, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, a Jewish state was established on German soil.   Some Holocaust survivors would probably have called it a blood bargain, but the rest of the world would most likely have considered it an appropriate form of restitution for the Holocaust.      

Quite a number of devout Jews believe that Palestine was promised to their ancestors by God, and it is therefore the only place where a Jewish state can exist.  My grandmother's family settled in Palestine in the 19th century.   There were also a community of Jews who made Palestine their home after the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492.  I read about  a family descended from these Spanish Jews in The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem by Sarit Yishai-Levi which I reviewed here .What happened to these Jews in Zelitch's universe?  Did they fall into a black hole? She only tells us that settlement in Palestine was a failure, but doesn't give us any specifics.   There is no mention of Sephardic (Spanish) or Mizrachi (Middle Eastern) Jews in Judenstaat.   It was as if the only Jews in the world were Ashkenazis (German and Eastern European Jews). I found this very troubling because of a pattern of injustice in the Jewish state of our universe.  In modern Israel, Ashkenazi Jews are politically and economically dominant.  American Jews who are opposed to Israel focus on their discrimination against Arabs, but they also discriminate against Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews.   In their absence, the German speaking Jews of Zelitch's Judenstaat discriminate against the Yiddish speaking Jews of Eastern Europe.

Does Zelitch believe that a just society is impossible?  I believe that there is no such thing as a utopia, but that we should aspire toward a society where there is less prejudice, and less bigoted behavior on the part of those who represent our institutions.  The main goal of those in power in Judenstaat seemed to be the concealment of injustice.

I found Judenstaat thought provoking, disturbing and saddening.   It was a difficult read and I can't say that I was glad that I read it.   I'm not sure that I actually needed to read this book, but there may be much more idealistic readers who still believe that utopia is possible, and that solutions to social problems are easy.   They are the ones who should read Judenstaat.

                                 

                                      

                                 

                                 

                                  

Intriguing Women- Indian Women Have Become Too Westernized

Net Galley issued a challenge to post a review by today August 12th. I've been meaning to review more Net Galleys.  Their emphasis in the challenge is on helping new books achieve visibility. So I didn't think I should review one of my Net Galleys that had already been archived.  I also like to try indie authors who are unknown to me.

I had just been approved for the anthology Intriguing Women by Lakshmi Raj Sharma. A search revealed that the author is a man.  This astonished me because Lakshmi is a Hindu Goddess.  I think that it's unusual for parents to name a male child after a Goddess.  Perhaps the author is a devotee of Lakshmi and took this name himself.  Intriguing Women is Sharma's third book. I received a free digital ARC from Net Galley in return for this honest review.

                                

   There are two connotations for the word "intriguing".  Americans are likely to use it to mean the same as interesting, but it's also a synonym for scheming.   Judging from the content of this anthology, Sharma is using the word to mean scheming.   I would probably have never requested the book if I had known this.  I had hoped to read about interesting women, not scheming women.  From my perspective, scheming women are irritating.   They are also usually boring because most of their plots are extremely predictable.  So it's not surprising that there were very few stories in this anthology that I liked.   I should point out that this is often the case with anthologies.  I expect to enjoy only a small percentage of the volume.  If there's even one story that I find memorable, I will consider the anthology worthwhile.  If I hadn't read it, I wouldn't have encountered that particular story.

My favorite story in Intriguing Women was "The Company Garden".  It's a British Raj era story dealing with reincarnation.  This is a theme that interests me.  The protagonist has visions of a "nautch girl".  I had never heard of this term, so I conducted a search and found this rather enlightening article from the Tribune of India.   They were secular dancers as opposed to temple dancers.  It occurs to me that Mata Hari would have been considered a nautch girl in India. I recently reviewed The Last Dance of Mata Hari by Michelle Moran here. According to the Tribune article, Christian missionaries degraded nautch girls.  Westerners did the same with the geisha of Japan.   Women who danced or who engaged in other performance arts were more respected in traditional Eastern cultures.   I was glad to learn something I hadn't known about India.

 The stories that I preferred in this anthology centered on unusual concepts rather than characters.  Since Intriguing Women was predominately satiric, the characters were largely designed as objects of derision. They tended to be lightweight stereotypes.  This often applied to the men as well as the women. Yet the main target of the anthology appeared to be westernized Indian women.  While I might agree with the author about the negative impact of westernization,  I did find the majority of these stories rather repetitive.

                               

 

Separation (Catnip #4) by J.S. Frankel Has Potential

Lately, my science fiction reads have been dystopian because the dystopian sub-genre has been diversifying its themes in intriguing directions.  Science fiction dystopias that primarily deal with censorship (Melophobia) have emerged.  So have dystopias focusing on climate change such as The Memory of Water by Emi Itäranta.  Nevertheless there is more to science fiction than dystopias.  Science fiction can also hold up a mirror to current society.

 I agreed to review the fourth book in J. S. Frankel's YA Catnip series because I was interested in the concept of inter-species hybrids.   I had read many novels dealing with the magical shapeshifters of fantasy, but this author's protagonists were genetically altered in secret laboratories so that they possessed both human and feline traits.  Humans with animal genes are known as transgenics in the Catnip series.  How would contemporary governments and ordinary citizens react to them?  What issues would J. S. Frankel explore?  With these questions in mind, I began reading my free copy from the author with anticipation.

                                 

 I hadn't read the previous three novels in the Catnip series.  So this was my introduction to the teen protagonists, Harry and Anastasia.   As the novel opens, they have already married. Yet there was considerable controversy over whether they should have the right to marry.   This brings to mind the struggle over same sex marriage in the United States.    Harry and Anastasia encounter people who  consider difference dangerous and disturbing.  The most extreme responses toward transgenics in Catnip #4 are displayed by populations in various European nations with a background of fascist or communist dictatorship in the 20th century, though I was reminded of current fear-mongering over Middle Eastern refugees in the United States.   J.S. Frankel's themes in this book seemed very contemporary to me.

It is important to point out that there are legitimate reasons to fear transgenics.  Not all transgenics are as well-intentioned as Harry and Anastasia.   There is also the problem that most transgenics devolve into animals. While this might not seem too bad for readers who have a great deal of affection for animals, the ability of transgenics to communicate and function in human society gradually declines over time in most cases.   This impacts human attitudes toward transgenics.  They aren't likely to achieve acceptance until the tendency to devolve is finally terminated.

Readers who love action will be very pleased by Catnip #4.  There is a prominent thriller component since the protagonists work with the FBI.  Harry and Anastasia get to display their  strength, speed and especially their superior claws on numerous occasions.   The story is largely told from Harry's viewpoint.  Their former and current FBI handlers are also well-portrayed.  Yet I was disappointed that I learned so little about Anastasia.   By the end of the book, I had a general idea of her history with very little in the way of specifics.  I also know that she had a hair trigger temper and makes a terrific ally in a fight, but I don't feel that I really understand her as I could understand and relate to Harry.

Another significant flaw for me is that I thought that the FBI wasn't depicted believably from a procedural standpoint.   At one point they were caught completely flatfooted despite having received a report that should have prepared them for the scenario that developed.   This just wasn't credible.  It made the FBI seem foolish and incompetent.  

I still feel that the Catnip series has the potential to develop in an interesting direction.   Perhaps it will meet my expectations in future volumes.

                               

                  

  
                                      

Sinfonia: First Notes on the Lute-- A Vampire Musician in Elizabethan England

I haven't read a vampire novel in years.   As I said the last time I reviewed a vampire novel on my earlier blog, there are two types of formulas in vampire fiction.  Either all vampires are evil monsters or they are all heroic.  I have zero interest in either formula. Since vampires were born human, it seems more likely to me that they are quite diverse and should be as complex as human beings.  I rarely see an author who writes non-stereotypically about vampires.

 I am rather fond of the concept on which the Saint-Germain vampire novels by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is based because they are really historical fiction from the POV of an ancient immortal being who is an outsider in every human culture.  I enjoy them because I love historical fiction particularly when they are from the perspective of an outsider. Unfortunately, many recent novels in the Yarbro series contained a great many irrelevant info dumps to display the author's research.  I got tired of them and stopped reading the series.

So I was delighted to find Sinfonia: First Notes on the Lute by David W. Landrum which is the first volume in a series about Nelleke, a musician who was born in 16th century Holland.  I received a free copy from the author in return for this honest review.

                                     

The novel tells the story of how she became a vampire.   Landrum accurately portrays the era's severe restrictions on girls and women that led Nelleke to flee her native country for Elizabethan England. It might seem that this would be an ideal environment for a musician like Nelleke, but musicians required patrons from the nobility and were subject to their whims.   There was also intense fear of Catholic conspirators who might seek to overthrow their Queen.  Although Nelleke encountered such historical personages as Shakespeare, the atmosphere wasn't always like a frothy Tudor costume spectacle filled with endless entertainment.   Sometimes these cultural icons were under official investigation by the authorities whose tactics could be brutal. Landrum's depiction of Elizabethan England as a culture of contradictions and extremes was quite believable.   He obviously did his research.

The most interesting aspect of Sinfonia's universe is that Landrum develops vampire society.   I was very interested in the Wodies who lived in the woods and were scorned by the urban vampires for being uncivilized.   The Wodies subsisted on animal blood which meant that they didn't kill humans, but did mean that they hunted animals. Nelleke was taught to hunt humans who were murderers, rapists or other felons who the world would be better off without.  In some cases, they killed in defense of vampires.  It's true that they were acting as judge, jury and executioner.  Readers will judge these vampires on the basis of their own ethical code.   A vegan probably wouldn't consider any vampires ethically compatible.

I enjoyed Nelleke as a character and wanted to continue to read about her in historical contexts.   There was an excerpt from Sinfonia 2 which opens in the 21st century.   I sincerely hope that the sequel doesn't  stay there.   I was hoping to experience Nelleke's adventures in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.  Unless Landrum does a great deal of unusual development of vampire factions, institutions and practices in the 21st century, I probably would consider a 21st century novel about Nelleke too similar to other current vampire fiction.

                               

                                   

Night in Shanghai: War Dismembers An Illusion of Paradise

Night in Shanghai by Nicole Mones was recommended on a thread discussing The Book of Harlan by Bernice McFadden on the Goodreads group, African American Historical Fiction.  I recently read and reviewed The Book of Harlan on this blog here.  These novels are linked by their African American musician protagonists and the fact that they both take place in World War II.  I mentioned the current popularity of WWII fiction in my last review.   This blog is demonstrating that trend since I am now reviewing three WWII books in succession.

Unlike The Book of Harlan and Karolina's Twins, Night in Shanghai doesn't centrally deal with the Holocaust.  There is a plot strand devoted to the Holocaust, but it isn't the major focus of the novel.   I already knew that the situation for Jews in WWII Shanghai was unique.   I had an instructor in college who fled Germany in the 1930's and took refuge in Shanghai.  It was from him that I first learned that Shanghai had been a major haven for European Jews and Communists during WWII.  It seems evident that this happened with the consent of the Japanese occupiers of Shanghai. What isn't entirely clear is why Shanghai accepted so many refugees from the Nazis.   I hoped to gain some insight into this situation from reading Night in Shanghai.

                                   

I should not have been surprised that one of Shanghai's Triads was so prominent in the plot and that a Triad owned jazz clubs.   The Triads were powerful criminal organizations equivalent to the Italian or Russian Mafia.   The Triad brought Thomas Greene, the protagonist, to Shanghai in order to become the band leader at one of their jazz clubs.   The Triad didn't care about race or ethnic background.  They cared most about loyalty and profit.  So Thomas Greene was treated as the equal of other musicians for the first time in his life.  For African American musicians, Shanghai seemed to be paradise.  It was very understandable that even when the war began to devastate the city, some were not eager to return to discrimination and segregation in the United States.

There was also a romance in this novel, but it was somewhat peripheral.   This is not a romance novel.   The relationship existed for plot and thematic reasons.   There is no HEA (Happily Ever After).   The female protagonist had her own priorities and Thomas Greene respected them.   To me, this showed that he really did love her.  I really appreciated that Thomas' feelings toward her freed him musically. The sentimental part of me wished that she believed in the romance more than she did, but  I could see why Nicole Mones chose otherwise for these characters.   Other readers disagree.   I have seen reviews that are deeply critical of this book's ending.  I found it both chilling and bitterly ironic.

I thought this book was original and that Nicole Mones showed us hard truths because perfection isn't possible.   Night in Shanghai is the best historical fiction that I've read in the first half of 2016.

                                     

   



   

                                  

Karolina's Twins: The Secret of a Holocaust Survivor

This is a review that I wrote for the other blog where I post regularly.  That blog used to be called Book Babe, but is now known as Flying High Reviews.  It's an attempt at re-branding, and I'm hoping that it's successful.  I copied the review of Karolina's Twins to this blog because I thought that my readers here would be interested in the themes discussed. 

Novels dealing with WWII have been extremely popular.  I think they have replaced Tudor themed books as the most published type of historical fiction.  When they focus on Holocaust themes, they are very emotionally intense.  Unfortunately, because of their intensity readers tend to burn out on them eventually.  So I predict that there will be another shift in the historical fiction market in the near future.

As someone whose family was severely impacted by the  WWII Holocaust, I actually avoided Holocaust themed novels for a long time.   I felt that they would be too painful for me to read.   I'm not sure what changed for me, but I started to read Holocaust fiction a few years ago.   At this point, I have begun to burn out.  I don't think that it's a good thing for anyone to read too much about genocide because it blunts the feelings of horror and outrage that should be the normal response to these events.  Yet I am still open to reading Holocaust novels that are unusual in their focus, or which educate me about an aspect of the WWII Holocaust that was previously unknown to me.

Karolina's Twins by Ronald Balson is a different sort of Holocaust novel. It is a contemporary/historical legal thriller.  It is also the third in a series dealing with the cases of private investigator Liam Taggart and lawyer Catherine Lockhart.  It centers on locating a pair of twins who have been missing since WWII.  I received a request to review this book through the publisher and downloaded it from Net Galley in return for this honest review.

                                 

I knew that the Jewish community in pre-WWII Poland located in the cities and larger towns was very different from that of my own shtetl ancestors.  A shtetl is a small insular village composed entirely of Jews.  They were isolated from the outside world, and had very little knowledge of Polish society.  Their way of life was eradicated by the Nazis.  The contemporary Haredi, who are more commonly known as Hasidim, have done their best to preserve it. Yet it's difficult to duplicate the culture of a rural village in an urban environment.

Lena Woodward, the fictional client in Karolina's Twins, came from a Polish town that still exists.  Her father was a tailor who was also a WWI hero. Due to his military background, he was highly regarded by local Poles.  The family was Polish speaking rather than Yiddish speaking, and was very much integrated into Polish society.  I had actually never read about Polish Jews who were so identified with Poland.  They reminded me of what I've read about German Jews.  So it didn't surprise me to learn that Lena's father had business and family ties in Berlin.  Through research I discovered a Jewish memorial website which stated that Jewish tailors who emigrated to Germany from Lena's town of  Chrzanow were an important factor in the establishment of the German clothing industry in the early 20th century.

Lena's story was told to Catherine Lockhart as part of the investigation in the present.  Normally, I would be very critical of a novel whose structure was so expository because it usually lacks immediacy.   Yet Lena's narrative contained dialogue and other characteristics of flashbacks that made it more engaging, and lent it dramatic power.  It allowed me to visualize events.  This is a key difference that made expository storytelling more successful in Karolina's Twins. Ronald Balson also handled suspense very well.   The plot was organized so that both the investigation and Lena's account reached a climax at the same time.

Lena was a courageous woman who was willing to take risks that most people would consider unthinkable, but her circumstances called for bold action.   In the present, this Holocaust survivor retained her mental acuity and vitality.  Yet she had regrets which caused her to conceal a crucial aspect of her past.  It's  this secret that brings her into a painfully distressing legal conflict with her son.  It lies at the heart of the narrative. Catherine's empathy and consistent supportive attitude toward Lena eventually allows the truth to surface.

Catherine impressed me with her willingness to place her career in jeopardy out of loyalty to her client.  Although the danger to Catherine in the contemporary storyline wasn't equivalent to Lena's traumatic experiences, there were suspenseful elements.  Catherine had the mental toughness to rise to the occasion.   So this book had two strong female protagonists.  This makes Karolina's Twins a novel that I can recommend to the audience for this blog.

                             

                                  

The Book of Harlan: Ambivalence = Depth

I thought I knew what I'd be getting with The Book of Harlan  by Bernice L. McFadden, and in some ways I was right, but in others I was wrong.  Yes, this is a novel about an African American musician who is sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis.  It's also about a number of other significant issues.   When a book attempts to address so much, can it be successful?  My feeling is that some aspects of  The Book of Harlan were more successful than others.

The equation in the title of my review shows the standard that I'm using to determine what I thought was really good about this book, and what I thought could be improved.

                                     

The portrayal of Harlan was the best thing about this book. He was the character who had the most depth.   I didn't always find him sympathetic, but he did feel like a genuine human being.   At one point I thought that Harlan did the unforgivable, but I was reconciled to the character because it seemed to me that he never forgave himself.   Doing the unforgivable ended up being something he had to live with.  McFadden movingly depicts how Harlan deals with this reality. She doesn't clobber us over the head with explicit angst in which he tells us directly how he feels.   Instead she shows us how Harlan was impacted through his actions.  His reticence was powerfully expressive.

This is a historical novel that covers a long period of time.   Since this is also a relatively short book, McFadden briefly mentions some names and events which leads readers inclined to do research to discover more about them.  I usually find opportunities for research really wonderful.  Yet sometimes McFadden's references weren't as meaningful as they could have been.

 For example, being employed in an all-African American dance company might have been financially beneficial for a dancer character, but was it psychologically beneficial?  She performed in African American dance shows for the World's Fair produced by Mike Todd.  I ran searches about the all-African American Mikado, The Hot Mikado, which Mike Todd also produced.  I learned that it has been analyzed in terms of racist representation.  In fact, you can find the poster for The Hot Mikado at The Jim Crow Museum  which is a collection of materials that display racist images.  So the African American character involved might have been conflicted about participating in a production that was probably rife with humiliating stereotypes.  I think that portraying that ambivalence would have made for a more complex characterization. The entire sub-plot involving her seemed under-developed.  I would call it a missed opportunity.

On the other hand, I was delighted to discover Eugene Bullard, the owner of the Paris club where Harlan performed.  He was a real historical personage with a fascinating life.   Bullard was the first African American military pilot.  To find out more see the article devoted to him on  Wikipedia.  I would very much like to read the biography Eugene Bullard:  Black Expatriate in Jazz Age Paris, and I have located it in a local library system.

Because I do research about historical personages mentioned in novels, I wondered a great deal about the incident at the end of the book.   I think that Harlan was definitely suffering from PTSD which is an understandable consequence of his experiences.  He wasn't entirely sane.  Bernice McFadden used indirect references and implications, so we can imagine what Harlan was thinking and feeling at the time. I thought that was very well-handled.  It provided a moving conclusion to The Book of Harlan. 

I still wanted to see more depth in characters other than Harlan--particularly the female characters.   It was a good book.  I learned about people and events in African American history that I hadn't heard about previously, and even an eye opening story about the well known musician, Louis Armstrong that led me to conduct hours of research.   Yet there were missing aspects.  Maybe The Book of Harlan should have been much longer.