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The newest books — by Jewish authors, about Jewish subjects or of interest to Jewish readers.
'Snow In August'
FICTION
By Pete Hamill,. Little, Brown & Co.; $23.95.
The Secret Book Of Grazia
Dei Rossi
By Jacqueline Park; Simon and
Schuster; $25.
1947 Irish Catholic neigh- Michael enters the building.
borhood in Brooklyn Thus begins an unusual friend-
comes alive for the 1997 ship between Michael and Rab-
reader in Pete Hamill's bi Judah Hirsch, a refugee from
new book, Snow in August. Prague. Michael soon becomes
From the charming, hazy-look- the rabbi's Shabbos gay and his
new protege.
ing cover depicting laun-
The two discover
dry hanging on
REVIEWS
they have much in com-
clotheslines strung be-
mon: They treasure
tween apartment build-
ings to the feel of standing in a learning and books. Over many
neighborhood candy store, he Saturdays, each makes new
catches you up in the spirit of discoveries. Michael learns Yid-
dish; the rabbi learns English.
the times.
The story begins with Michael learns about Kabbal-
Michael Devlin, an 11-year-old ah and the golem; the rabbi
learns about base-
ball and Jackie
Robinson.
Inside the small
shul where they
meet, their friend-
ship flourishes
and is protected.
Outside, however,
is another, less ac-
cepting, world.
A gang of street
thugs has been
terrorizing the
neighborhood,
particularly Jews,
and Michael wit-
nesses the brutal
beating of a Jew-
ish candy-store
owner. Threat-
ened by the thugs
and questioned
by the police,
Michael is in a
quandary. He is
afraid to talk and
afraid not to, even
when the thugs
beat him. When
Author ol A Drinking
he confides his
problem to the
altar boy on his way to church rabbi, he is gently reminded
in the midst of a terrible snow- that to keep quiet about a crime
storm. Hearing a voice calling is just as bad as committing the
to him from a small synagogue, crime itself. But it is only when
he turns to find a bearded man the rabbi is beaten by the same
pleading with him to turn on a gang that Michael decides he
must act.
light switch.
From the mysticism of 16th-
Overcoming his fear, partic-
ularly of Jews and things Jew- century Prague to the realism
ish, by pretending to be one of of swastikas on synagogues and
his own comic-book heroes, the bigotry at Ebbets Field,
Snow in August is a tantaliz-
ing summer read.
Beverly F. Mindlin
The Shovel And The Loom
By Carl Friedman; Persea; $20.
THE D E TR O I T J EW IS H NE WS
A
88
is a staff
writer for the Cleveland
Jewish News.
— Beverly F. Mindlin
of Our Crowd, Birmingham has
written about a fabled liquor dy-
nasty, governed by a Russian im-
migrant patriarch and his
German-Jewish wife; it also is the
story of wealth and scandal, high
society and murder.
Translated from the Dutch, this
second novel by Friedman simply
relates the story of a young
woman, in Antwerp in the 1970s,
and her search for meaning and
humanity in the shadow of her
parents' Holocaust experience.
NONFICTION
THg SECRET 1300K, of
firaZia r Pt y cAesci
The Sun At Midday: Tales Of
A Mediterranean Family
By GiniAthadeff; Pantheon; $25.
JACQUELINE PARK
In the vein of The Garden of the
Finzi-Continis, this is a sweeping
Mabuse and M, which includes
the feeding of Nazi slogans to the
mouths of the film's most evil
characters. The film, of course,
was banned by the Nazis, but
Lang was invited by Joseph
Goebbels to direct Nazi produc-
tions. Fearing a trap, and that
they would discover his mother's
Jewish background, Lang caught
a train to France that very
evening.
Misha: A Memoir Of The
Holocaust Years
By Misha Defonseca; Mt. Ivy;
$24.95.
At the age of 7, Defonseca's
parents were arrested in Nazi-
occupied Belgium; she was sent
to a safe house in Brussels. Turn-
ing out to be not-so-safe, she fled
into the woods, beginning a four-
year, 3,000-mile trek across Eu-
rope, looking for her family and
safety. She found massacres,
rapes, the Warsaw Ghetto, par-
tisans, kind nuns and wild
wolves.
Tearing The Silence: On Be-
ing German In America
By Ursula Hegi; Simon and
Schuster; $24.
novel of the Italian Renaissance.
It tells — through a secret diary,
a legacy to her son — of an heiress
to a Jewish banking dynasty
forced to choose between two men
and two worlds. Debut novel of
Park, professor emeritus at NYU.
The Reader
By Bernhard Schlink; Pantheon;
$21.
A German novel of a schoolboy
and a former Auschwitz employ-
ee who fall in love.
The Wrong Kind Of Money
By Stephen Birmingham; Dutton,.
$24.95.
Social historian, chronicler of
the Jewish upper class and author
Born in Alexandria, Egypt,
and raised in Cairo, Khartoum,
Florence and Tokyo, Alhadeff
had a Catholic upbringing. As a
young woman, she discovered her
Sephardic Jewish roots. In seek-
ing more information, Alhadeff
came across her grandfather,
forced to leave his Italian colony
on Rhodes for Egypt under Mus-
solini's racial laws; a gynecolo-
gist uncle who was interned at
Auschwitz and Buchenwald; and
a "violet-eyed aunt who refused
to have new slipcovers made for
her sofa so President Nasser
would find the worn ones when
her house was impounded."
Fritz Lang: The Nature Of
The Beast
By Patrick McGilligan; St. Mar-
tin's; $30.
The life of the Viennese-born
film director of Metropolis, Dr.
The award-winning author of
Stones from the River and Float-
ing in My Mother's Palm, Hegi
"tears the silence" that has
haunted the lives of post-war
German immigrants in Ameri-
ca, exploring the Holocaust
through a story we have not
heard. Interviewing 15 German-
born Americans, who were small
children during or just after
World War II, the interviewees
confront the silence that made
any mention of the Holocaust
taboo in their homes and schools
while growing up. Hegi includes
her own personal journey of leav-
ing Germany at 18.