The Man in the Box

Rating:
Summary: Is Niki A Boy or a Girl?
Review: Because he is on the verge (in my opinion) of greatness. If he challenges himself more as a writer and a wordsmith and deepens his thinking, he will be under serious consideration for the Nobel. He is a humanist. And his writing is great humanist writing, but his ability (again, my humble opinion) has not yet matured. *ALL* of his books so far are worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Moran better not lose his grip...
Review: Because he is on the verge (in my opinion) of greatness. If he challenges himself more as a writer and a wordsmith and deepens his thinking, he will be under serious consideration for the Nobel. He is a humanist. And his writing is great humanist writing, but his ability (again, my humble opinion) has not yet matured. *ALL* of his books so far are worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Is Niki A Boy or a Girl?
Review: I liked this novel very much and thought the characters were believable and memorable. I think Moran captured the moral reality of everyday heroism--as well as the fact that many people who do good just do it and aren't sure why, just as those who do evil just do it. But I am very puzzled by Moran's handling of Niki and am still not sure of the sex of the protagonist although, unlike my co-reviewers,............... Perhaps Niki's vague sexual identity is meant to represent the thin line between good and eveil, Christian and Jew, who knows? I found it all a bit distracting. But I loved the book and will buy Moran's other works.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting gem with complex characters
Review: The strength of The Man in the Box is the clarity of the depiction of complex characters - even bit characters. The narrator's grandfather, for example, is referred to only in one short passage explaining the half-orphanhood of the narrator's best friend. Yet in the short passage a real three dimensional portrait of a hard, drinking man unmissed except, perhaps, by his wife.

No one is wholely evil or wholely saint ... in fact the motivation for hiding the Jew in the box is less than morally pure. And the Jew, isolated in his box with adolescents as his primary audience, has a wide range of responses to his current situation and to his excessive time to review his past.

This is not yet a great book but it is very good and its strength indicate that Thomas Moran is a writer well worth watching for.

Rating:
Summary: Ambiguous Tale of Coming of Age and Holocaust
Review: Thomas Moran has made a wonderful debut as a fiction author with this compelling, chilling, moving tale of Niki Lukasser growing up in Nazi Austria with a Jew, Dr. Weiss, walled up for his own protection, in the barn. This is an unusual story but it is created and built up in ways that make it believable. No good deed or bad will go unpunished and betrayal is an always quietly lurking shadow among the people. The relationships are complicated, particulary the child and the man in the box, and the author makes ambiguous all the various choices of the characters. There is no black or white, good or evil, just people making good and bad decisions, often for very personal and odd reasons.