Hester Among the Ruins: A Novel [Hardcover]

Binnie Kirshenbaum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2002

A darkly comic novel with the moral power of Bernhard Schlink's The Reader about love in the shadows of history.

Born in New York in 1963, historian Hester Rosenfeld—very American and marginally Jewish—goes to Munich to research the life of Heinrich Falk and becomes his mistress. Born in Berlin in 1943, raised in the ruins of defeat by a generation of "murderers and cowards," Professor Falk is neither infamous nor famous—he is simply the German Everyman. Hester believes his life story could make for an important contemporary historical document—kitchen table history. Heinrich is married (four times, twice to his current wife) and has four daughters. But madly in love with Hester, adultery is nothing new to him. As he assists her in her note-taking—about him and his family, about German history—she often suspects Heinrich is covering up something. Was his brother really a Werewolf, a Nazi militiaman who vowed to continue fighting after the war's end? What kind of gas company did his mother work for? And what exactly did his father do during those years?

Yet Hester has her secrets, too, and the longer she remains in Germany the harder it is to keep them concealed. As she uncovers more of the Falk family's possible connection to Nazism, she finds herself reexamining her feelings about her own parents and her complicated attraction to Heinrich. As the lovers' intimacy deepens beyond the erotic, each suspects the other of hiding something about the past.

Called a "rare and remarkable writer" by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham, Kirshenbaum has written a searing novel about history's unforgettable legacy and its continuing impact.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As if love affairs were not already delicate enough, in Hester Among the Ruins, New Yorker Hester Rosenfeld decides to write the biography of her older German lover, Professor Heinrich Falk. Born in 1943, and married for the fourth time when he and Hester meet, Falk seems a German Everyman, embodying the troubled postwar identity of his nation. To be near her beloved, Hester moves to Munich. Their affair is secret. She spends her spare time in her hotel room, writing up notes and congratulating herself on how happy she is in the role of Other Woman. But being in Germany and researching the wartime years makes her think for the first time about her own Jewishness, and about her elderly immigrant parents who were so eager to assimilate into American culture that dishes like Rice-a-Roni appeared nightly on the dinner table. Hester comes to terms with her own shame and guilt while building a store of belated anger that finds expression in the direction of her research: the Nazi connections of her lover's family. "With vision skewed," she admits, "I am on the lookout for bad behavior. I expect these people to be hateful; I want them to be hateful, because if they are hateful then the world makes sense." A closely observed novel with an atmosphere of constriction and suspense, Hester Among the Ruins is a riveting, unsentimental exploration of the limits of love and understanding. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly

This tale of a Jewish biographer's literal love affair with her German subject describes with worldly and generally persuasive candor the history that complicates their relationship. Hester Rosenfeld, an American Jewish historian born in 1963, travels to Munich to interview Heinrich Falk, a German historian 20 years her senior, for a scholarly work about his life. As Hester unravels biographical threads rolled out by Heinrich's relatives and numerous ex-wives, she finds that his present rejection of his heritage (most specifically, his mother's sympathies with the Nazis) is not as simple or absolute as it seems. She also falls head over heels in love with him, eventually causing the temporary dissolution of his current marriage. As Heinrich and Hester deepen their knowledge of each other's lives and feelings, their characters manifest themselves more fully as well. Hester, seemingly wary and jaded at the novel's outset, reveals her insecurity, obsession with historical legacy and scorn for her own parents in bits and pieces. Heinrich, at first an offbeat charmer whose idiosyncrasies fascinate Hester, eventually reveals that he is unable to free himself from his suspicious ideological inheritance. Kirshenbaum brings believable complexity to her portrayal of Jewish life in contemporary Munich; at one moment, a group of Croatian soccer enthusiasts resemble militant youth to Hester, while at another, she notices that she gets better service in restaurants when she wears a star of David around her neck. The novel's structure, a mixture of postcards, e-mails and straightforward narrative, is subtly erected and does not obstruct understanding. While Kirshenbaum occasionally portrays characters' passions melodramatically or even tritely, the arc of the lovers' mutual education is complete and convincing. Agent, Jennifer Lyons. Author appearances in New York and Washington, D.C.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (February 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393041522
• ISBN-13: 978-0393041521
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,483,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Ich bin ein Berliner", April 28, 2003

By 

tomboy (Berlin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hester Among the Ruins: A Novel (Hardcover)

A young Jewish-American historian going to Munich to do research on medieval traditions and customs - that's the seemingly harmless starting point of Binnie Kirshenbaum's new novel.

But the story soon takes a more dangerous twist when the ambitious and well assimilated Hester Rosenfeld who has so far only devoted herself to American colonial history falls in love with her German advisor, professor Heinrich Falk, who is twenty years older than her. On the spur of the moment she throws all caution to the wind and decides to write his biography as "a typical German" of the post-war generation, who was "born in the shadows of history", in Germany's darkness and shame.

This "project" which is part of a charming and innocent "folie à deux" is by its very nature bound to fail, but Binnie Kirshenbaum is a skilful and clever author who derives an amazing amount of insight from her first person narrator's futile attempts to deal with the horrors of the past and the oddities of the present. Not only does Hester Rosenfeld meet many quirky German characters in her quest, not only does she realize how much the feelings of guilt have created an uneasy mixture of shame and philosemitism in Germany, but she eventually becomes aware of her own Jewishness in ways that she didn't know about in her earlier life.

The result is a fascinating, dark, sexy novel, full of light, funny moments.

I've followed Binnie Kirshenbaum's earlier books with great enthusiasm, I loved 'Disturbance in one Place' and 'Pure Poetry', but there is no doubt that 'Hester' is her most political statement so far.

I heard Binnie Kirshenbaum read in Berlin and I got the impression that the German audience well appreciates the fact that there are American writers who are interested in the Old Continent, who listen to what people here have to say and who take the message back home.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important, Intelligent, Heart-wrenching, April 27, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Hester Among the Ruins: A Novel (Hardcover)

Kirshenbaum delivers once again with her special blend of bittersweet romance, finely drawn characters and a protagonist for the ages. When Hester Rosenfeld comes to Munich to be with her older, intellectual German lover, and write his story, what follows is a complicated tale of love. Theirs is a relationship between people so simliar, yet opposite, with pasts that Kirshenbaum explores with dignity and hilarity all at once. Hester's observations of Munich, her investigation into her lover's life, and her independent yet devastatingly romantic spirit make her the perfect modern everywoman. This is a novel that tackles universal truths with a deft hand. Have you read Kirshenbaum's other novels? Start now and be forever grateful!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love, History and Jewish Identity, June 4, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Hester Among the Ruins: A Novel (Hardcover)

In this most elegantly written and constructed novel, the protagonist, Dr. Hester Rosenfeld is forced to confront her own Jewish identity as she pursues a love affair with a German professor twenty years her senior. Living in a small hotel in Munich in order to fulfill her role as the Other Woman, Hester denies the value of her own heritage, from rejecting her immigrant parents on. However, as an intelligent researcher she cannot avoid the questions about a Nazi connection to her lover/subject's past. This slowly leads Hester to acceptance of herself - and ultimately the moment of unresolvable conflict between German and Jew in the shadow of the Holocaust. This is a rich and complex exploration that is also entertaining and humorous. I highly recommend it!