Book Review: "The Severed Wing", by Martin J. Gidron
Sunday, March 18th, 2007 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lethargic_manMartin J. Gidron's The Severed Wing (which I read after ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
embryomystic mentioned it) is not, as the cover might suggest, a World War II novel. Nor is it a WW2 alternate history. Instead, it is something I had not come across before, a Holocaust alternate history.
The novel, set in 2000, concerns Janusz, a Polish illegal immigrant in the United States, working as a reporter for the Yiddish-language newspaper Freiheit. For, in this world in which WW2 and the rise of Nazism never happened, there is still a burgeoning Yiddish-language culture, and millions of Jews alive who died, or never existed, in our world.
Though Janusz is very much secular—reflecting one of various changes in the life of the post-1940s ostjuden in this novel—the book opens with a quotation from the Mishna: "For thus we find in the case of Cain, who killed his brother, that it is written 'The bloods of your brother cry unto me' (Gen 4:10): Not 'the blood of your brother,' but 'the bloods of your brother'—that is, his blood and the blood of his potential descendants." This is a theme that runs through the book: again and again, we come across Jews whose ancestors were killed in our universe: the daughter of Anne Frank and Walter Benjamin, Mordechaj Anielewicz's son, Emmanuel Ringelbaum's, and so on.
Not that this is a rosy alternate: with Jews still being drafted into the armies both of the czar and his opponents in Poland, they are both sides' prime choice to send to the front line. Indeed, without the Holocaust to have brought the world to its senses, the casual antisemitism of the early twentieth century has continued, and eastern Europe is still plagued by pogroms, oh, I'm sorry, ethnic riots. In a way, it's quite depressing.
In America, the goldeneh Medinah, none of this applies, but Janusz has problems of his own: when his girlfriend's father dies, she returns to her mother in Salonica, and cannot get a visa back to America. Shortly afterwards, people in Janusz's life start disappearing, one by one: for reasons unexplained, reality is shifting around Janusz, bringing him closer and closer to our world.
Though the subject matter of the book is grim, the book is not, for most of its length. As is common in alternate history and historical fiction, the author has fun dropping in references for the reader to pick up—the old jailbird in the Dominion of Palestine whom the alert reader will recognise as Yitzchak Shamir, the naming of the scheme for preventing the collapse of the Russian Empire at the end of the Great War as the Marshals' Plan, and so forth.
Tech level is in general lower in this universe than ours—jets are still experimental in 2000, (home) computers unknown, and a seventies-vintage radio valve-based. Though this is not explained, the implication I believe is that tech development in our world was driven faster by war: WW2, and possibly the Cold War too.
Towards the end, the structure of the plot seems to break down somewhat: Janusz lurches from crisis to crisis, responding ever less rationally and more impulsively, grasping at any straw he can then rejecting them them in turn. But perhaps, on reflection, this is not necessarily a defect: confronted with an enemy so faceless, one could sympathise with such behaviour. As for the ending, (spoiler ROT13-ed) gubhtu aneengvir pbairagvba fhttrfgrq (gb zr ng yrnfg) gung Wnahfm jbhyq riraghnyyl or erhavgrq jbgu Veran, naq gur gvzryvar fgnovyvfr nebhaq gurz, va uvaqfvtug V frr vg jbhyq or n orgenlny bs uvfgbel sbe gung gb unir unccrarq. Ab "pbfl pngnfgebcur", nfpapersky chgf vg, urer.
The author talks in his afterword about his reasons for writing this: how the Jewish perception of history has become distorted, to appear to converge upon the Holocaust and establishment of the State of Israel, but also how the Holocaust has become a cliché, "a euphemism for the nearly infinite evil and loss it represents, and a way for us to avoid confronting it." This novel addresses both of these concerns; a thought-provoking read, I recommend it.
Looking back at what I've written, I can see this is very much alethargic_man-style review. I would be quite interested to read livredor's review of this book. But first, we'd (probably) need to get her to read it. :o)
(And now I've squared up to reading this, I suppose I ought to stop shying away from the thought of readingpapersky's Farthing...)
embryomystic mentioned it) is not, as the cover might suggest, a World War II novel. Nor is it a WW2 alternate history. Instead, it is something I had not come across before, a Holocaust alternate history. The novel, set in 2000, concerns Janusz, a Polish illegal immigrant in the United States, working as a reporter for the Yiddish-language newspaper Freiheit. For, in this world in which WW2 and the rise of Nazism never happened, there is still a burgeoning Yiddish-language culture, and millions of Jews alive who died, or never existed, in our world.
Though Janusz is very much secular—reflecting one of various changes in the life of the post-1940s ostjuden in this novel—the book opens with a quotation from the Mishna: "For thus we find in the case of Cain, who killed his brother, that it is written 'The bloods of your brother cry unto me' (Gen 4:10): Not 'the blood of your brother,' but 'the bloods of your brother'—that is, his blood and the blood of his potential descendants." This is a theme that runs through the book: again and again, we come across Jews whose ancestors were killed in our universe: the daughter of Anne Frank and Walter Benjamin, Mordechaj Anielewicz's son, Emmanuel Ringelbaum's, and so on.
Not that this is a rosy alternate: with Jews still being drafted into the armies both of the czar and his opponents in Poland, they are both sides' prime choice to send to the front line. Indeed, without the Holocaust to have brought the world to its senses, the casual antisemitism of the early twentieth century has continued, and eastern Europe is still plagued by pogroms, oh, I'm sorry, ethnic riots. In a way, it's quite depressing.
In America, the goldeneh Medinah, none of this applies, but Janusz has problems of his own: when his girlfriend's father dies, she returns to her mother in Salonica, and cannot get a visa back to America. Shortly afterwards, people in Janusz's life start disappearing, one by one: for reasons unexplained, reality is shifting around Janusz, bringing him closer and closer to our world.
Though the subject matter of the book is grim, the book is not, for most of its length. As is common in alternate history and historical fiction, the author has fun dropping in references for the reader to pick up—the old jailbird in the Dominion of Palestine whom the alert reader will recognise as Yitzchak Shamir, the naming of the scheme for preventing the collapse of the Russian Empire at the end of the Great War as the Marshals' Plan, and so forth.
Tech level is in general lower in this universe than ours—jets are still experimental in 2000, (home) computers unknown, and a seventies-vintage radio valve-based. Though this is not explained, the implication I believe is that tech development in our world was driven faster by war: WW2, and possibly the Cold War too.
Towards the end, the structure of the plot seems to break down somewhat: Janusz lurches from crisis to crisis, responding ever less rationally and more impulsively, grasping at any straw he can then rejecting them them in turn. But perhaps, on reflection, this is not necessarily a defect: confronted with an enemy so faceless, one could sympathise with such behaviour. As for the ending, (spoiler ROT13-ed) gubhtu aneengvir pbairagvba fhttrfgrq (gb zr ng yrnfg) gung Wnahfm jbhyq riraghnyyl or erhavgrq jbgu Veran, naq gur gvzryvar fgnovyvfr nebhaq gurz, va uvaqfvtug V frr vg jbhyq or n orgenlny bs uvfgbel sbe gung gb unir unccrarq. Ab "pbfl pngnfgebcur", nf
papersky chgf vg, urer.The author talks in his afterword about his reasons for writing this: how the Jewish perception of history has become distorted, to appear to converge upon the Holocaust and establishment of the State of Israel, but also how the Holocaust has become a cliché, "a euphemism for the nearly infinite evil and loss it represents, and a way for us to avoid confronting it." This novel addresses both of these concerns; a thought-provoking read, I recommend it.
Looking back at what I've written, I can see this is very much a
lethargic_man-style review. I would be quite interested to read livredor's review of this book. But first, we'd (probably) need to get her to read it. :o)(And now I've squared up to reading this, I suppose I ought to stop shying away from the thought of reading
papersky's Farthing...)
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 10:59 am (UTC)I'm so pleased that you read it, and got as much out of it as you seem to have. I've recommended it before, but no one's responded to the recommendation by reading it, unfortunately.
It seems you were able to pick up on references that I didn't catch. I got the easy ones, like Anne Frank (and did you note the name of the conductor of the orchestra that Janusz was listening to?), but I didn't know who Walter Benjamin was, and I'd heard of Mordechaj Anielewicz, but I'd forgotten his name. Emmanuel Ringelbaum sounds familiar as well, but I'm not sure whether I'd heard of him or not. I love the concept of Yitzchak Shamir being the guy in Palestine, but I wasn't terribly familiar with him either. I could tell by the way different characters were used that there was something meaningful about who they were, but I couldn't remember what I'd read about them.
Some days I think everyone should read this book.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-11 09:01 pm (UTC)I didn't get all of them either, but after the first few I took to looking up all the names that seemed meant to be meaningful to the informed reader.
I'm now tempted to read this (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/ref=pe_pe_13230_5056350_as_img_4/?ASIN=0007149824) (though I can't now remember how I came upon it—apologies if I'm pre-recommending you a book you recommended me :o)).
no subject
Date: 2007-04-12 10:22 am (UTC)I imagine it would be easier to get to Sitka than Israel, if one were coming from the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-12 11:09 am (UTC)Not from the Soviet Union (or the whole of Soviet Jewry would have upped and gone to Israel in the seventies or earlier).
no subject
Date: 2007-04-12 01:11 pm (UTC)