The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman

Rating:
Summary: Mr Szczypiorski Made Me Cry
Review: Figaro Magazine was right: "superb and staggering." Mrs Seidenman is at the epicenter of a collapsing world. She is beautiful and cultured, yet otherwise unremarkable. A disconnected cast of mostly ordinary, yet often remarkable, men women and children swirl about her on the brink of extinction. Seemingly underwritten, this telling of a horror for the ages almost sneaks up on you and gathers momentum until the very last page. It left me dazed and a little wiser.

Rating:
Summary: Great literature
Review: I just finished reading this book aloud to my wife. "Beautifully written" would be too little praise for this piece of fine literature. I found it reminiscent of Tolstoy at his best, but it stands on it's own. Andrzej Szczypiorski tells the story, not of Mrs. Seidenman, but of humanity. The only thing that I can compare this book to is the film "Decalogue" by his fellow Pole Krystof Kieslowski. It is full of, how shall I put it?, perhaps "tenderness" for the plight, and the beauty, of people with all of their humanity. Like Tolstoy, he does it without sentimentality and allows us to see beyond the surface of each character. And, also like Tolstoy, he does so with words, sentences, paragraphs, that seem to flow effortlessly.

Do not be decieved that this is merely a novel "about" the holocaust, or Poland, or Catholicism. It is about people. From the sympathetic whore who gives shelter to a desperate Jewish boy to the Nazi who orders the deaths of Jews. We discover that neither the whore nor the Nazi could have done anything other than what they did.

A wonderful writer. A wonderful book. Not just a good read but a great experience.

Rating:
Summary: Great literature
Review: I just finished reading this book aloud to my wife. "Beautifully written" would be too little praise for this piece of fine literature. I found it reminiscent of Tolstoy at his best, but it stands on it's own. Andrzej Szczypiorski tells the story, not of Mrs. Seidenman, but of humanity. The only thing that I can compare this book to is the film "Decalogue" by his fellow Pole Krystof Kieslowski. It is full of, how shall I put it?, perhaps "tenderness" for the plight, and the beauty, of people with all of their humanity. Like Tolstoy, he does it without sentimentality and allows us to see beyond the surface of each character. And, also like Tolstoy, he does so with words, sentences, paragraphs, that seem to flow effortlessly.

Do not be decieved that this is merely a novel "about" the holocaust, or Poland, or Catholicism. It is about people. From the sympathetic whore who gives shelter to a desperate Jewish boy to the Nazi who orders the deaths of Jews. We discover that neither the whore nor the Nazi could have done anything other than what they did.

A wonderful writer. A wonderful book. Not just a good read but a great experience.

Rating:
Summary: A poignant account of wartime as experienced by the innocent
Review: The American perception of life during World War Two is cast in images of women working, doing jobs traditionally reserved for men, of busy factories, constantly turning out munitions of war, ration books, victory gardens, and pictures of heroic looking young men in uniform occupying places of honor on walls, mantelpieces, and end tables all over America. The reality and horror of war was far away - not so for Mrs. Irma Seidenman.

Andrzej Szczypiorski's The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman is a novel set in Nazi-occupied Poland during WW II. Born in Warsaw in 1924, Mr. Szczypiorski fought in the Polish Resistance, took part in the Warsaw uprising in 1944, and served time in a German concentration camp. Drawing on his wartime experience, Szczypiorski assembles a montage of characters struggling for survival in wartime Warsaw, cleverly knitting their experiences within the lives of his main characters, Pawelek Kry ski and Irma Seidenman.

Mrs. Seidenman had been a neighbor of the Kry skis before the war. A beautiful Nordic looking woman, Irma has been able to elude the Nazis, dodging the fate of the rest of Warsaw's Jewish community. Irma possesses two crucial attributes, blue eyes and blonde hair, that have, with the help of forged papers, established her as Mrs. Maria Magdalena Grotomska, the widow of a Polish Army officer. With the help of Pawelek, who is obviously in love with her, she has been able to blend in with the rest of the Polish population, until one fateful day, when she rounds the corner of a Warsaw building and comes face to face with Bronek Blutman. Blutman is a Nazi toady, a nefarious Jew who is surviving by fingering Warsaw Jews who have escaped the Nazi net.

Using the narration of Mrs. Seidenman's rescue, Szczypiorski, interjects the lives of a collage of Warsaw's inhabitants caught up in the terror of the Nazi occupation. His prose successfully instills the sense of despair felt by Pawelek's friend Henio as he decides to return to the ghetto. It is through Szczypiorski's eloquence, we experience the dignity of judge Kujawski and the conniving tactics of Lolo, we pity the Jewish lawyer Fichtelbaum and hate the consciencelessness of the Gestapo officer Stuckler.

Szczypiorski's novel exposes the American audience to a harsher reality of the War. His vignettes draw a poignant picture of individual responses to the Nazi terror in an easily readable style that transports the reader into the lives of his characters. The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman is an enlightening account of the War experience viewed from the perspectives of the many innocents trapped in its inhumanity.

Rating:
Summary: A story of survival
Review: The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman is one of the most beautifully written novels I have ever read. The author deftly weaves together several people's lives which converge during the same time period. There are no distilled characterizations of heroes or demons; rather, fairly ordinary and yet complex people who are trying to figure out how to live and survive in Nazi occupied Warsaw. To further exemplify how ordinary the characters are, Szczypiorski projects each person into their future to let the reader know what will become of him or her. This can be an artifical plot device but in this case, it is highely effecting. Moreover, it does not take the reader so much out of the present, rather it helps one to better undertand the complexity of each character--no matter how "simple" he or she may seem. This is a very full reading experience. It is thought provoking, affect laden and a really well told story. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the Holocaust and/or Poland.

Rating:
Summary: A Not So Simple Tale
Review: The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman is one of the most beautifully written novels I have ever read. The author deftly weaves together several people's lives which converge during the same time period. There are no distilled characterizations of heroes or demons; rather, fairly ordinary and yet complex people who are trying to figure out how to live and survive in Nazi occupied Warsaw. To further exemplify how ordinary the characters are, Szczypiorski projects each person into their future to let the reader know what will become of him or her. This can be an artifical plot device but in this case, it is highely effecting. Moreover, it does not take the reader so much out of the present, rather it helps one to better undertand the complexity of each character--no matter how "simple" he or she may seem. This is a very full reading experience. It is thought provoking, affect laden and a really well told story. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the Holocaust and/or Poland.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, poignant book
Review: The book is about the human side of each of us. It is about the inner feelings, fears and desires. The catalyst is the danger of living in the wartime Poland. The holocaust that brings the worst and the greatest in people. It is also about the passage of time. Time is the great equalizer. In the end it does not matter; the horrors and the happines, the crimes and the heroism. The book is very truthfull. Author knows how to reach the depths of ones soul. One of the best books I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: A story of survival
Review: This one is along the lines of The Pianist. It's well written, and provides another view into a time that I still can't fathom.