Customer Reviews

The German Money

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There should be a statue of limitations on complaining about our parents and what they did or didn't do to us or for us. By age 30, after we've gotten our noses bloody a few times and wallowed in as much pleasure as our bodies and bank accounts can stand, we may have learned just enough to realize that either our parents knew more than we're willing to admit, or that they were truly hopeless and more to be pitied than to be censured. And that should be it. Time to grant them absolution and move on.

Then, there are the cases like Paul's. His father bore the scars of being orphaned early in his life; his mother was a Holocaust survivor who came to America, married and left her past in Europe. He realizes that they were not the stereotypical Jewish families: "We were anything but lively and outspoken, not a perpetual carnival of conversation at all. Dad could be social and glib, but not with us, never with us. And serious subjects just weren't on our map."

With his sister and brother, Paul grew up in a home ruled by mysteries, subject to his mother's sometimes implacable silences and inexplicable anger. Small wonder he fled the urban jungle of New York City for the wilds of Michigan to escape his past as well. He had hoped he could abandon his Jewish heritage, his fiancé, Valerie, and bury himself in his dead-end job as a university librarian.

But Paul is drawn back to New York City after his mother dies of a heart attack, and he learns that, of his three siblings, he alone would inherit "the German money," the compensation his mother collected and never spent. The amount, nearly a million dollars, creates a split in the family, and Paul -- beset with a form of survivor's guilt -- becomes consumed with learning why he was chosen.

But unlike Nick Hoffman, the college professor turned detective in Lev Raphael's witty and acerbic mystery series, Paul is no investigator. His quest to divine the secret of the German money moves in fits and starts, in between coping with his sister's claims on his inheritance, his father's Alzheimer's and his attempts to rekindle his relationship with Valerie, who, it turns out, has some secrets of her own.

Raphael has written short stories and novels dealing with Jewish, Holocaust and crime, and "The German Money" can be seen as a distillation of all of them. He lets the story unfold slowly, giving the reader time to become acquainted with the characters before reaching deep into the emotional undertow and bring to the surface the tensions that bind and divide a family.

Paul's journey into his past doesn't reveal everything, and Raphael resists tidying all the loose ends, giving "The German Money" a necessary messiness that reminds us that ties of blood and kinship are not keys into the realm of perfect knowledge. Sometimes, we simply have to go on as best we can, and let the secrets be.

I am careful about the books that I recommend to reading groups. It isn't enough that the book be a "good read" (easily enjoyed and as easily forgotten). People join book clubs for a variety of reasons, sometimes social ones, and often because they are starved for a decent conversation. But the conversation will only be as good as the book, so there isn't any point in choosing something easy.

I agree with Kafka when he says "A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us", especially when it comes to book club reading. If you don't find your world rocked and your assumptions challenged, then what will there be to discuss? Nothing kills a discussion faster than a book that everyone likes, but no one can complain about.

By this defination "The German Money" by Lev Raphael is an excellent "book group book". The author, an award-winning writer and a book reviewer for The Detroit Free Press, is perhaps best known for his wickedly satirical mystery novels. But this book is something entirely different:

The German Money-- in Paul's family it refers to money paid by the German government as reparations to his cold and enigmatic mother, a survivor of the Holocaust. When his mother suddenly dies, Paul is shocked and bewildered to find she has left him the entire amount of "the German money". Shocked, because there is over a million dollars. Bewildered, because it was left to him with no explanation, even though Paul hadn't spoken to his mother in years, unlike his brother Simon and sister Dina, who don't receive a dime.

Feeling like a reluctant prodigal son, Paul endures the simmering hostility of his sister, and the quiet grief of his brother, while he tries to come to terms with this troubling and mysterious legacy. But the more he finds out, the more he starts to have doubts about his mother's death. Rose was a bitter woman but healthy one, with no reason to die of a sudden heart attack. So what really happened? And why don't his brother and sister want to know?

This is an intense novel that insists its reader fall into Paul's world- a world filled with secrets and silences, where the past was too painful to accept and was ruthlessly expunged. The world, in fact, of many children of Holocaust survivors. His mother filled Paul's childhood with a disastrous string of furious, inexplicable outbursts, and equally furious, implacable rejections. He was a child astray in his mother's emotional minefield. It was inevitable that he would be maimed.

The book is written entirely in Paul's point of view-the author never breaks ranks from the first person, a stylistic feat in itself. But this is no gentle reminisce by a friendly narrator. The story is relentless and Paul's anguish and turmoil inescapable.. Readers will know what it is to be an angry and embittered young Jewish man who has spent the better part of his life running from something that happened over fifty years ago, to a completely different person. Even a million dollars can't make it all worth while.

There is enough here for hours of good discussion, and a few places to indulge in a truly heated argument. Do children always have to pay for the sins of their parents? Can something as ephemeral as money ever hope to compensate the victims of the Holocaust? And most importantly, is forgiveness possible?. The German Money wields a sharp axe at a vast frozen sea, indeed.

As a child of Holocaust survivors, I approached Lev Raphael's book with both eagerness and trepidation. Eagerness, because I have been an avid fan of his Nick Hoffman mystery series, and have always enjoyed the quality of his writing. Trepidation, because as the child of survivors, I have always had a difficult time dealing with this issues that created for me, vis-a-vis my relationship with my own parents. Not surprisingly, all of my expectations were fulfilled in The German Money. The book is tightly written, more of a novella than a novel, but is full of deftly drawn characters who come vividly to life. We see a family in shambles because of the secrets kept by Paul's mother. Who was she? Why did she keep herself hidden not only from her children, but from her husband? How did she accumulate such a fortune, and why did she leave it to the one person who overtly rejected her? Raphael creates an intellectual and emotional mystery, and the power of this book is that the mystery is only partly solved at the end. The reader is left to draw her own conclusion about some of the "whys", and this takes Raphael's book to a whole different level than the run-of-the-mill family saga or mystery. Although I found the book slow going in spots, it was more because I had to step away from it to process my own feelings rather than because of the quality of the writing or development of the plot. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the effects of the Holocaust not only on those who survived the horror but on the generations that follow them.

Lev Raphael knows how to write true suspense - a page turner where you care deeply about the outcome of the characters and where the character have heart and deal with their emotions. From page one, this one had me hooked. The German Money is not a book you've read before but Raphael is a novelist you will want to read again. Can't wait for the next one!!

I don't think I can add much to the Washington Post review of Lev Raphael's THE GERMAN MONEY. It is an outstanding book and deserves all the praise it has been receiving. Some DorothyLers may not pick this book up since it isn't classified as a mystery, but it contains the elements of the greatest mysteries of all...the human heart and psyche.
Paul, has been almost estranged from his family for years. He moved from New York to Ann Arbor and the fact that he prefers Michigan to New York City is baffling to them. His two siblings have learned to cope in their own way with the bluster of their father and the seeming coldness of their mother, a Holocaust survivor. When Paul returns, shortly after his mother's death, he is astonished to learn that he inherits "the German money", restitution paid to Holocaust victims. He can not understand the motive for this since his mother never touched the money even though it was invested and grew to a tidy sum and certainly never showed him any love or affection.
Haunting and unforgettable, THE GERMAN MONEY is even better than I expected from Raphael, and having read his novel, short stories and JOURNEYS & ARRIVALS, I did expect a lot.

Lev Raphael's latest book, The German Money, is as wonderful as it is complex. The main character, Paul, is an intelligent individual who slowly uncovers layers of intrigue involving a dark family secret. When his mother dies, Paul is surprised to learn that she has left him a large sum of money. His troubled relationship with his mother leads him to question her motives, but the more he explores, the greater the mystery. As Paul searches for answers, he is forced to confront certain truths about his parents, his siblings and even about himself. And while the heart of the book is overflowing with substance, nothing could prepare me for the heart-stopping ending! Lev Raphael has crafted a story that is brimming with wisdom, wit and honest, raw human emotion. I could not put this book down!

I've read and enjoyed Mr. Raphael's Nick Hoffman books but they didn't prepare me for this concise dynamo of a novel. The honed quality of its prose, the plot design, depth of characterization and richness of ideas owe far more to the conventions of American literary fiction than mystery genre fiction. The German Money is a wise and emotionally riveting work, and many of the scenes rise to such a fierce emotional pitch that I frequently had to stand and walk off the tension.

The primary mystery in The German Money isn't the classical mystery who did it and why of genre fiction, but the greater mystery of the painful emotional legacy passed from one generation to another. As you've no doubt gleaned from the reviews preceding this one, the central plot device involves the reunion of three children gathered to discuss the will left behind by their recently deceased mother. The daughter, Dina, is a beautiful, vindictive shrew with a touching affection for her befuddled and perpetually underachieving younger brother, Simon, whose inability to make a concrete decision is brilliantly framed by his bisexuality. Paul, the protagonist of the novel, has fled the family for the relative wilds of Michigan, where he works in a job that taps the smallest percentage of his talents as he avoids close relationships with those around him. Paul is not an unemotional protagonist; rather, he's a man who decided to disallow himself emotional fulfillment, the emotions working fervently below a stiff, almost paralyzed surface.

Mr. Raphael deftly illustrates in scene after scene how the characters of the children were deeply influenced by the pain and intense anger of their mother, but the novel never allows the characters to escape responsibility for their own choices. The final passage into adulthood involves not just our own acceptance of responsibility for who we are, but an understanding of who our parents are outside the parent-child relationship; to understand why our parents treated us as they did we must trace how they were formed by their time and by the limitations and gifts of their own characters. Mr. Raphael beautifully brings this notion to life in The German Money, the novel centering around Paul's struggle to come to terms with the heritage of a deeply troubled mother, and to move beyond it to lead his own life fully.

This was the first book I have read by Raphael and it was execellent. He so skillfully takes us into the minds of his characters especially the narrator, Paul that it was hard to not keep reading this book all night. His story line is great especially the weaving in of a love interest, Valerie from his college past. But the ending is what took my breath away. What a superb twist of a tale. This is a quick enjoyable read that you will definately not want to pass up.

If you've not read much about the Holocaust, the twist in Lev Raphael's latest book, The German Money, is pretty strange. Hard to believe. Fantastical even. But if you're a Holocaust survivor, or the child of one, or happen to know much about the Holocaust and its aftermath in terms of the physical and psychological toll it took on its victims, this tale easy to believe.

Raphael, a child of survivors, writes an emotionally-charged, raw and honest story with a shocking ending, but one that clearly ties up the question of why and how the mother died, and neatly ties up other parts of the story, too. It's an ending worth waiting for. Not that you'll skip ahead, mind you, you'll be much too busy turning the pages to find out what comes next.

No doubt those familiar with Raphael's other work will compare The German Money with Winter Eyes. Having not read Winter Eyes prior to reading The German Money, I picked up my wife's copy of that book and read it. Powerful writing there, too. And while they tackle somewhat the same subject, each book carves out its own niche quite nicely.

If you take the children of Holocaust survivors from Winter Eyes and mix in Raphael's mastery of mystery in the Nick Hoffman series, you get The German Money -- a gripping, well-drawn story that shows the emotional impact the Holocaust has on the children of the survivors, too.

Raphael's gift for turns of phrase that sketch out dramatic characters and scenes is in full flower here, wrapped up in a package that I could barely put down while waiting for a delayed flight at Detroit's Metro Airport. I'm no fan of Northworst, as he and many Michigan residents know Northwest Airlines, but that five-hour delay gave me plenty of time to read. The German Money kept me so engaged and turning pages that I didn't notice the time go by.

My sister insisted that I had to read this book! I had read some of Lev's "comic academic mysteries" and I will admit that I had no idea of what to expect and how much I was going to enjoy this book. It turns out to be one of the best books I have read this year and might be in my all time top ten.

I have said (no doubt along with many others) that the only thing that was worse than living through "The Depression" is to be a child of parents that lived through the depression. After reading this I see that I need to read "Dancing on Tisha B'Av". To see the effects of the Holocaust on the children of the Holocaust victims in such an arresting story had me dreading the end of the book. I wanted to finish it but at the same time wanted to make it last, the what do I do when it is over syndrome.

I am not sure where to put it, it isn't really a mystery, but it is, it has, at least for me, suspense and thriller elements and I feel it is romantic rather than erotic. The mystery of Paul's mother. The suspense and the conflicts between Paul and his brother and sister. And the romance. Who can read this and not wonder about some past love, what might have been and what might be. Let me see, where is that old phone number?

In short, sorry Gwen, you don't get this back until Bimbi and Rachel read it!