The Postcard

The Postcard by Anne Berest came highly recommended by a friend who knows a lot about me. She didn't steer me wrong. What a book. It's a fictionalized version of the author's family history.

In 2003, Anne's mother receives an anonymous postcard, an old postcard, with the names of her relatives that had been killed during the Holocaust. This set Anne's mother, Lelia, on a quest to learn more about the history of her family. Years later, in 2018, Anne, herself becomes obsessed with the postcard. Who were these people? Who might have sent the postcard and why?

The autobiographical novel is told as Anne's mother shares some of the stories with her daughter and then some of the research that Anne is doing on her own. There's a bit of antisemitism in Anne's daughter's classroom which Lelia believes Anne needs to take care of immediately.

The Rabinovitch family went from Moscow to Latvia to Palestine and eventually thought they'd found the perfect home in Paris when the world gears up for World War II. Anne - and her mother - feel very disconnected from their family history.

I'm disappointed with myself that I didn't highlight the passage that brought the most meaning of the book to me.I hope this won't be considered a spoiler. Anne never really feels quite Jewish and eventually she realizes that day in and day out, she's a descendant of survivors. I think I've mentioned that I was married to the child of Holocaust survivors so reading about Anne's lightbulb moment and questions I often wondered about my former husband's connection to Judaism, things clicked for me, too, in a very impactful way.

I've recommended this to others and so far, those who have read it were glad they had.

The Violin Conspiracy

 Brenda Slocumb is the author of the autobiographical fiction, The Violin Conspiracy. Fictional Ray loves playing the fiddle, much to his mother's consternation. She'd like nothing more than for Ray to get a job at a hospital cafeteria making minimum wage, helping to support the family. Ray, however, has a dream to be a professional musician. The only one who supports him in this dream is his grandmother.

His grandmother gifts him her grandfather's beat-up fiddle which turns out to be a priceless Stradivarius! Ray was a talented violinist but knowing that this the violin his grandfather played gives him a special spark. 

Ray is recruited to attend college on a music scholarship by a professor who does all she can to show him that his dream makes sense. She helps him conquer the racism that beleaguers the music world. Ray - and his Strad - take the music world by storm.

He's all set to compete in the Tchaikovsky Competition, the Olympics of classical music, when his violin is stolen from his case, with a ransom note - and a sneaker - in it's place. Ray suspects either his family - or the family that owned his great-great-grandfather when great-great-grandfather was a slave. But could it be someone else?

Slocumb cleverly knits the story together, taking us back in time. Will Ray every find his violin?

The novel allowed me to explore things I'd never thought of before, mostly involving race and being a musician as a career. I never really warmed up to Ray as a character, though. Is that why I only gave this one 3-stars on goodreads? Perhaps.

The Crazy Ladies of Pearl Street

I don’t know where I first heard about The Crazy Ladies of Pearl Street (and why do I often see it written as The Crazyladies...), but it’s been on my radar for quite a long time. Probably since it first was published. I guess I had an interest in reading it because my husband spent part of his growing up time living on Pearl Street. I really had no idea what to expect about this Trevanian autobiographical novel. No idea when it was set or who the characters were. And Trevanian? A mononymous author? What was up with that?

Turns out that this novel is set on North Pearl Street, Albany, in the 1930s. The mostly Irish part of Pearl Street. My husband lived on the other end of Pearl Street, the Italian part of Pearl Street in the late 1950s or early 60s. I envisioned relaying anecdotes from the novel to my husband about the place where he had called home. That turned out not to be the case.

I’m not really sure where the word crazyladies comes in to play. Yes, there were some crazy ladies living on Pearl Street. But the story wasn’t about them. They were merely the supporting characters in the story of Jean-Luc’s time on North Pearl Street. Were his experiences unique to unique to Pearl Street? Or could this story have been set in any poor immigrant neighborhood in the time after the Depression until shortly after World War II?

I liked the snarkiness of the first person narrative, and I loved the use of language. Otherwise, the novel dragged on and I pushed myself to read it quickly… so I could be finished with it. It was good enough that I didn’t want to drop it, but it was keeping me away from books that I imagined I’d like a lot better.

In reading reviews, it seems that fans of other works by Travanian seem to appreciate this one a little bit more. But after slogging through this novel, I have no intention of slogging through another by him.