Amazon.com Review
Set in Hungary and Israel after the Second World War,
Louisa breathes modern life into the Old Testament. In Simone Zelitch's recasting of the Book of Ruth, a mother and her daughter-in-law--both widows--once again travel toward Israel, enduring hardship and hunger. But this time they're together in the wake of the Holocaust. Once again, the daughter-in-law, Louisa, is an alien--a German among Jews, a resilient and practical woman who finds jam for scones when no one else can, who charms enemies and authorities with her singing voice.
The story is narrated by Nora, for whom Louisa is both a blessing and a curse, a reminder of her old life. Both women loved Nora's son, Gabor, and both feel the past is their true homeland, because in the past he was alive. Shuttling back and forth between Nora's childhood, her marriage and motherhood, and the present, where she takes this strange journey with this strange girl, Louisa showcases Zelitch's storytelling gifts. Characters are loosely yet carefully drawn, and the realm of childhood is particularly vivid. Nora remembers herself as a teenager, smoking with a boy in a graveyard: "Dizzy still, heart beating fast, I stared up through the trees for a while. The sky was Prussian blue, the way it is just as the sun sets. I knew I was lying on top of a lot of dead people, and I didn't care."
Through such flashbacks, Nora's voice proves to be very strong, paving the way for a significant point-of-view problem that distracted this reader numerous times. Written in first person, the novel nevertheless takes diversions into scenes and territory Nora could not have possibly witnessed firsthand. It's as if Zelitch hasn't decided if she wants a first-person narrator or an omniscient one. For readers who find such formal problems cumbersome, Louisa could prove a difficult read. But for those hungry for new versions of the oldest stories, it's worth the trouble. --Ellen Williams
From Publishers Weekly
Among the risks that Zelitch (The Confessions of Jack Straw) takes in this haunting novel, the most daring is the voice of her cigarette-addicted, existentially angry, bitterly uncompromising narrator, Nora Csongradi Gratz. Not that Nora hasn't earned the right to complain. Having survived the Nazi liquidation of Hungary's Jews, she has lost everyone important in her life. Her husband, a clandestine Communist, left Budapest in the late 1930s and never returned; her beloved son, Gabor, is dead; and her charismatic cousin Bela, a Zionist who emigrated in 1919 to spearhead Jewish settlement in Palestine, has disappeared from his kibbutz. Nora herself has survived only with the help of her despised daughter-in-law, Louisa, a German whom Gabor married under duress because she hysterically insisted on becoming his wife. In 1949, when Nora reluctantly emigrates to Israel, her slavishly attentive daughter-in-law insists on coming tooDmirroring the biblical story of Naomi and Ruth. After Bela fails to meet them, they live in a transient camp where Louisa is cursed by Holocaust survivors. As Nora searches for Bela and relives her life in flashbacks, she gradually discloses the complex reasons that Louisa chose to cleave to a Jewish mother-in-law. Their symbiotic relationship is complex and bizarre. Louisa's determination to marry Gabor, and now to convert to Judaism, covers a desperate emptiness. But is she, in addition, a symbol of redemption? Nora, too, is obsessive about her secret love for Bela; only gradually, she learns that his life, despite its brilliant early promise, has been as empty as hers. Zelitch's narrative teases with emotional puzzles and surprises with unexpected developments. She shows virtuosic skill with background and atmosphere: Hungary's turbulent social ferment before WWII, and the clash of political ideologies during and after the conflict; the almost amicable relationships between early Jewish pioneers and their Arab neighbors; harsh postwar reality in Palestine. While she demonstrates a sure grasp of history, Zelitch here transcends historical events with a provocative depiction of the enduring mysteries of human relationships. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
