My Holocaust: A Novel [Hardcover]

Tova Reich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 2007

This is a satirical novel about the attempted take over of the largest Holocaust institution in America by rival groups wanting a share in the suffering of the Jews.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this savage satire of Holocaust commemoration's misuses, Reich paints and pillories a culture of victimhood that, with its accompanying commemorative kitsch, all but eclipses the actual victims. Novelist Reich (The Jewish War) sketches a gallery of "Holocaust hangers-on," grotesques eager to hijack the Shoah for tawdry commercial and ideological purposes. Presiding over the strategic exploitation is Maurice Messer, a retired ladies' undergarment maker who has parlayed inflated claims of being an anti-Nazi partisan into the chairmanship of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; his feckless son, Norman, president of Holocaust Connections Inc., a brand consultancy with the motto "Make Your Cause a Holocaust" (of which Maurice is board chairman); Norman's daughter, Nechama, who has embarrassingly run off to join the convent across the street from Auschwitz; and Maurice's right-hand man, Monty Pincus, who expertly deploys melancholy over the six million to seduce women. Once the idea of the "Chinese Holocaust" (the "rape" of Nanking) or the "Native American Holocaust" gain traction, however, Maurice and Norman may not be able to control the results. Whether Maurice and Norman are rebranding "mountains of shorn hair" from Auschwitz for "an anti-fur organization eager to firm up its Holocaust status" or schmoozing ecumenically with a Holocaust-denying Arab terrorist, Reich's satire is broad, scabrous, cynical, over-the-top, often hilarious—and likely to cause a scandal. (Apr.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

More than 70 years later, most writers still tread softly when it comes to the six million Jews (and countless others) who died at the hands of the Nazis. My Holocaust is a totally different breed. A shocking, brave satire, the novel digs into those who, in the name of avenging six million deaths, commodify tragedy. Despite her absurd, offensive characters (including a jihad terrorist who gets co-opted by a rabbi), Tova Reich never trivializes the Holocaust: indeed, by presenting the outlandishness of her characters' cheap morality, she encourages readers to ponder the gravity of the Holocaust. "I take no offense in being offended, if the truths revealed enlighten," notes the Philadelphia Inquirer. And with humor and anger, My Holocaust enlightens.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1 edition (April 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061173452
• ISBN-13: 978-0061173455
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #672,175 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars How would you like your sacred cow?, June 3, 2007

By 

Kelley "BTs Rule!" - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Holocaust: A Novel (Hardcover)

An A for effort - great writing, a sharp eye for detail, and the brazen concept. The author bravely goes to the edge - and then jumps right off. The first 3/4 of this book contain some brilliant bits of savagely funny satire - there were several times when I put the book down and just laughed for a minute or two. Loses steam and becomes tiresome in the last 100 pages.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 5 stars despite a very annoying feature ..., November 26, 2007

By 

P. Meltzer (Wynnewood, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: My Holocaust: A Novel (Hardcover)

Ultimately, I decided that this book was so brave and daring, so well-written and so constantly laugh-out-funny (no mean feat when talking about the Holocaust), that I couldn't bring myself to give it less than 5 stars. That's not to say that I wasn't tempted though. The author has a penchant for writing both sentences and paragraphs that go on and on and on, seemingly forever. When reading a book, I find that the eye and the mind tend to seek out "resting points", whether in the form of periods to end sentences, or paragraph breaks to start new paragraphs. Ms. Reich however often seemed to have an aversion to both and the result is that sentences routinely ran more than 100 words and many (if not most) paragraphs were well over a page long. I found that when one is getting to the 123rd word in a sentence which in turn is about the 60th line in a paragraph, it becomes very hard to follow along and the mind starts to wander. When will this sentence ever end? When will this paragraph ever end? I did find that from time to time, these long sentences were used to excellent effect and were just the right technique in those certain instances. For the most part however, I just found it mentally exhausting. As I say, I still give it 5 stars, but I was annoyed by that aspect of the book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A book that almost brilliantly succeeds, but falls short., January 6, 2010

By 

Yaakov Ben Shalom - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Holocaust: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is a ribald satire about the establishment and leadership of the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The first half of the book is both offensive and outrageously comical as the father-and-son duo of Maurice and Norman Messer shepherd potential donors on a first-class tour of Auschwitz. If that notion was not crazy enough, the personalities of all involved and the things they say will make your jaw drop at times and make you burst out in audible laughter at times. And part of what makes such a crazy story so fabulous is its verisimilitude. As ridiculous as the whole set up is, the reader can't help but wondering if things really did happen even remotely this way as the museum was being set up. This first part of the book also contains some intriguing critical commentary about the entire enterprise of Holocaust commemoration in the United States. The first half of the book deserved 4.5 stars, in my opinion.

However, I agree with so many other reviewers that book goes off the rails in the last 100 pages. Simply put, the last third of the book is not very good. There are so many intersecting plot lines that all sense of verisimilitude is lost. People's lives cross paths in ways that defy logic (and My Holocaust is not magical realism). There are new characters introduced far too late in the novel, and they simply complicate the action without contributing to it in a meaningful way. The main characters' quirks get stranger and stranger. There are numerous random digressions that go nowhere. Sometimes the prose is downright confusing because the author frequently employs interior monologue for multiple characters. It can be interesting, but it is unwieldy here. It is too bad that the book did not end after the trip to Poland or that Tova Reich did not rein in her wilder flights of fancy.