Louisa

Rating:
Summary: Nevermind the title...this is Nora's book
Review: Although the title of this book is LOUISA, the plot and story revolve around the life of its narrator, Nora Gratz. The book's dust jacket describes Nora as a 'prickly, strong-willed survivor of the Holocaust.' Nora and her mesmerizing daughter-in-law Louisa arrive in Haifa after the war, ready to begin a new life.

Before a new life can be started, however, Nora and Louisa must review their pasts and resolve complex issues of their lives together and their lives apart.

Nora's one true love was her cousin Bela. They had a close relationship as children and when Bela immigrated to Israel, Nora was devastated. She marries and has a son, Gabor, but she never forgets the love of her life.

Louisa came from an upper-class German family and enjoyed a protected childhood. Her world is turned upside down when she meets Gabor, a poor but gifted young man. Louisa's relationship with Gabor borders on the obsessed, but they eventually marry.

After the war, Nora and Louisa go to Israel to find Bela. Both women must be very resourceful to survive in this new land. The non-Jewish Louisa is suspect in the holding camp, but Nora defends her presence by repeating: 'She saved my life.' Nora spent many months during Nazi occupation of Budapest in Louisa's basement and feels an obligation for Louisa, but not much more.

The author tells the story of these two women by moving back and forth from past to present and from Nora to Louisa. The effect is sometimes disconcerting and waiting for the entire story to unfold is sometimes frustrating. I was never sure why the author chose to title the book LOUISA, as the story is ultimately Nora's.

On a more positive note, the book offers a look at life in Budapest before the war and it offers an intense look at early life in Israel and would prove educational to anyone interested in that time period

Rating:
Summary: Caught in the Sweep of History
Review: As in her earlier novel, THE CONFESSION OF JACK STRAW, the characters in LOUISA are caught in the sweep of historical forces of tremendous power. In LOUISA, Simone Zelitch adds a mythic element as well, retelling the story of the Book of Ruth. Even though this is a "retelling" of an ancient story, the characters and the story are fresh, beautifully drawn and authentic. This is a wonderful novel.

Rating:
Summary: Caught in the Sweep of History
Review: As in her earlier novel, THE CONFESSION OF JACK STRAW, the characters in LOUISA are caught in the sweep of historical forces of tremendous power. In LOUISA, Simone Zelitch adds a mythic element as well, retelling the story of the Book of Ruth. Even though this is a "retelling" of an ancient story, the characters and the story are fresh, beautifully drawn and authentic. This is a wonderful novel.

Rating:
Summary: well-intentioned "Louisa" loses its way in mired narrative
Review: Good intentions do not necessarily produce good results. Such is the case with Simone Zelitch's "Louisa," an allegorical novel exploring the relationship between a Holocaust survivor and her non-Jewish daughter-in-law. Based on the Biblical story of Ruth (a point which the author ham-handedly repeats throughout her labored narrative), Zelitch's work is convoluted, confusing and confounding.

"Louisa" strangles itself in a knotted, nearly incomprehensible narrative. Nora Gratz, an irascible chain-smoking survivor, is yoked to her Teutonic-goddess daughter-in-law, Louisa. Presumably owing her life to Louisa's determination to care for her during the Nazi occupation of Hungary, Nora never resolves her relationship with Louisa. The interplay between the two women spans both pre and post-Holocaust Europe and Israel and achieves only an artificial and predictable resolution. In between Nora's son falling in love with Louisa and the latter's ultimate dedication to Judaism (faithfully following the biblical template), readers must navigate at least four distinct narrative paths, none of which is easy to follow. Zelitch does not permit or encourage identification or empathy with her major characters, instead preferring them to represent archetypes. This may satisfy her need for allegory but does little to create authenticity in character.

Equally unsettling is the confusion generated by the author's unnecessary and bothersome switching from one setting to another, one time period to another, one set of characters to another. Zelitch seems not to be able to decide what kind of novel "Louisa" is to be. It is, without success in any one area, a novel describing the disintegration of Jewish life in pre-Holocaust Hungary, a novel exploring the trying circumstances of falling in love during periods of social upheaval, a novel about the creation and fortification of Israel, or a novel about people with serious emotional and mental instabilities.

The novel is confounding in many respects. Characters disappear and reappear, sometimes hundreds of pages later. The most compelling character in this novel about Jews is Louisa, whose determination to become Jewish takes on a heroic Christian tone in her seemingly eager welcoming of unwarranted suffering and rejection. The most honorable character, a woman who becomes involved with Nora's mysterious cousin, deserves far more treatment than the scant twenty pages Zelitch provides her. Nora's edgy anger, her unsettling personality and her tenuous grip on reality wear thin; by the time "Louisa" ends, readers have discovered their patience exhausted. What could have been a profound examination of loss, identity and change instead is banal, unprovocative and disenchanting.

Favorably compared to "Sophie's Choice" by the New York Times, "Louisa" is a disappointment. Predictable, without focus and flat, the novel adds little to our understanding of righteous Gentiles, the psychological consequences of being a survivor or the creation of Israel. For those interested in the story of Ruth, the original source would provide more emotional resonance than the novel.

Rating:
Summary: A must read!
Review: In the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution, a Hungarian Jewish family is about to find out that their life will never be the same. The story alternates between Hungary and Palestine/Israel.

As many probably know by now, "Louisa" parallels the Biblical story of Ruth, which is also recounted in the novel. This updated version invites an interesting comparison. Beyond that, I'm not entirely sure why it's there or the basis for the novel, except as an interesting device or Torah commentary. One can speculate on the themes of conversion and loyalty.

The chronology zigzags a lot, but the reader should be able to follow it, and like a well-made jigsaw puzzle, it fits together by the end of the novel. The narrator is Nora: daughter, wife, mother, but most importantly, a cousin to Bela who emigrates to Palestine and founds a Kibbutz with a small group of his fellows in the 1920's, and with whom she has a twenty year correspondence. It is the rough drafts and the highly personal letters that Nora can't bring herself to send, which she saves for years, that are the most revelatory. The other major characters are Louisa, her Christian German daughter-in-law, Nora's son Gabor, and Nora's husband Janos. There are also several other interesting and colorful minor characters.

Nora is a hardbitten individual, always with a quick retort, but hiding a soft center. Louisa is harder to get a grasp on, although it might be said that she is soft and simpering on the outside, but really made of steel. Early on, we watch how manipulative Louisa can be in getting want she wants. My one frustration is that I couldn't get to know each of them better, that includes as well Bela, Janos, and Gabor. The style is spare and harsh, like Nora herself, and we only know as much as Nora is going to tell us.

By 1944 Nora is in hiding in Louisa's parents' cellar. Louisa's parents have left Budapest. Nora and Louisa seem devoted, and yet each has a different version of their relationship, each claiming that she saved the other in the retelling in Palestine, where they arrive in 1949. There are small annoyances, such as the use of cigarettes as a prop and a metaphor in almost every situation, and the sniping quality that seems to infect almost every character in the novel. Although Zelitch has claimed that she took her cues from time spent in the Peace Corps in Hungary, I still would have preferred to see more differentiation. No society's people are monolithic. Despite all this, subtly and the less is more rule whet the reader's appetite enough to sustain interest.

Although I can't completely say why, this novel even with its flaws took my breath away. Perhaps it can be found in the meticulous description of places and people that have vanished and the futility of stopping time even as we ache for what has been lost.

Rating:
Summary: A kaleidoscope of fragments.
Review: Like small pieces of glass rotating and reflecting new patterns, Zelitch's story of the Holocaust, Zionism, and the founding of Israel appears in fragments and rotates upon itself. Scenes move back and forth in time, between characters, between Hungary and Israel, and between first and third person narratives. The reader must work hard here to connect these fragments and to see how all the characters relate to each other, but gradually, the fragments evolve into a whole picture with a depth, scope, and historical grounding that are rare in fiction.

Ostensibly, this is the intriguing story of Louisa, a young German Aryan who marries Gabor, a Hungarian Jew, as World War II is breaking out. But it is equally the story of her feisty mother-in-law Nora, the primary speaker of the narrative, who decides to emigrate to Israel in 1949. The reader learns of the problems each woman has faced in Hungary during the Holocaust, her family history, her involvement in intellectual and cultural life, and her personal relationships. It is a book of enormous, epic reach.

One of the difficulties of developing a story like this in fragments, however, is that the reader is often so busy connecting ideas that s/he remains somewhat distanced from the characters, being forced to accumulate information about them, rather than partipating in the action with them. The characters become players on a stage, in a drama which is not completed until the end of the book. Despite substantial background information, I never felt that I really knew Louisa and Nora or "got inside" their heads enough to be able to understand them or predict how they would behave. Their motivations are often unclear because the fragment of the story which explains motivation appears later in the book. The deliberate parallels between Louisa and Nora and the Biblical story of Ruth and Naomi give depth and scope to their relationship, but they do not fully explain it.

Ultimately, I found this novel thoughtful, enlightening, and even important, but it didn't capture my heart. Its unique approach to the Holocaust story, its slice-of-life pictures of early Israel, its themes, and its "big picture," while truly admirable, do not generate a great deal of warmth or lead to complete characters which linger long in the reader's memory--at least, this reader's. I wish it had been so.

Rating:
Summary: A fine debut novel
Review: This engrossing, well-told tale of Nora, a Jewish Hungarian woman, and her gentile German daughter-in-law Louisa drew me in from the first sentence. Nora arrives in Israel following World War II with widowed Louisa. The other Jewish refugees resent Louisa and try to pressure Nora to send her back to Europe, but Nora can only reply, "I owe her my life." As for Louisa, she explains her strange desire to convert to Judaism and to become an Israelite as simple love for Nora. But the reader knows that these sentiments, while enough for some people, does not completely explain why they are together in this foreign land. As the women's stories emerge, a uniting force becomes apparent: Gabor, Nora's carefree, reckless, and handsome son.

Zelitch has done an admirable job of characterization, from gritty Nora, to refined but resourceful Louisa, to Nora's idealistic cousin Bela, to Nora's measurement-obsessed husband Janos. This story unfolds at a leisurely pace that never bores; the narrative is full of details that give everything - and everyone - life. Although, as noted by other reviewers, the point-of-view shifts can be disconcerting at first, it was clear to this reader that Nora, not an omniscient narrator, was imagining and embellishing scenes she could never have known first hand in an effort to understand herself how she came to be in the new Jewish homeland with Louisa.

Readers who expect a page-turner should look elsewhere, but those who appreciate the richness of literary fiction should find much to admire.

Rating:
Summary: A fine debut novel
Review: This engrossing, well-told tale of Nora, a Jewish Hungarian woman, and her gentile German daughter-in-law Louisa drew me in from the first sentence. Nora arrives in Israel following World War II with widowed Louisa. The other Jewish refugees resent Louisa and try to pressure Nora to send her back to Europe, but Nora can only reply, "I owe her my life." As for Louisa, she explains her strange desire to convert to Judaism and to become an Israelite as simple love for Nora. But the reader knows that these sentiments, while enough for some people, does not completely explain why they are together in this foreign land. As the women's stories emerge, a uniting force becomes apparent: Gabor, Nora's carefree, reckless, and handsome son.

Zelitch has done an admirable job of characterization, from gritty Nora, to refined but resourceful Louisa, to Nora's idealistic cousin Bela, to Nora's measurement-obsessed husband Janos. This story unfolds at a leisurely pace that never bores; the narrative is full of details that give everything - and everyone - life. Although, as noted by other reviewers, the point-of-view shifts can be disconcerting at first, it was clear to this reader that Nora, not an omniscient narrator, was imagining and embellishing scenes she could never have known first hand in an effort to understand herself how she came to be in the new Jewish homeland with Louisa.

Readers who expect a page-turner should look elsewhere, but those who appreciate the richness of literary fiction should find much to admire.