Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Holocaust reading

In the last weeks I read a couple of books about the Holocaust (if you read my Anne Frank page you'll understand why I'm interested in that).
The first one was "Our Holocaust", by Amir Gutfreund, and I didn't like it at all. It sounded promising: how the next generation experimented the Holocaust lived by their parents. It started like a memoir, with plenty stories about his childhood, and how he and his best friend had investigated about the Holocaust in a neighborhood that was tight-lipped and morally dominated by "Grandpa Yosef", a survivor who had dedicated himself selflessly to the care of his sick wife and son, and to help the rest of his community. Some of the experiences he finally related were a bit weird, but we're talking about the Holocaust here, and anything is possible.
So, imagine my dissapointment when I read in the afterword that a lot of the characters in the novel were invented! I didn't know I was reading fiction, I honestly thought I was reading a memoir, and I felt tricked.
Well, that taught me to read the Afterword before reading the book!
The next book was a lot better. It's called "Hitler and the Holocaust", and it's written by Robert Wistrich, who is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It has a lot of references, which reassured me that this time it was really non-fiction. It's a very complete work in a short volume, and I learned a lot of new stuff.
Finally, I had to read "Anyone but you" by Jenny Crusie to shake off the depression. It's the first time I've read it and I liked it a lot. I think the portrayal of the "doctor" hero is one of the most realistic I've ever read in romance literature, down to sleeping in the examinating tables between patients. The doubts of the heroine regarding their age gap (she's 40, he's 30) also rang true. And of course, it has a smelly four legged Cupid in the dog, Fred, who steals the limelight.
I also liked that there wasn't any secondary romance. For a minute I feared that the heroine's best friend and the hero's brother would end up together, but they disliked each other too much. Maybe they have their own book somewhere, but luckily they didn't steal any pages from the primary romance.

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