Pious Secrets [Hardcover]

Irene Dische (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this wry, eccentric and pretentious first novel, originally published in German though written by a native New Yorker, German-born pathologist Connie Bauer brings home a beau, fellow pathologist Ronald Hake. He meets her children and her parents, with whom she lives in suburban New Jersey now that she is divorced from an unsuitably Jewish man. In a moment alone with Hake, who writes obscure philosophical papers, Bauer's eight-year-old daughter, Sally, who often spends afternoons at the morgue where her mother works, confides her theory that Opa, her grandfather with the ridiculous mustache and the German accent, is really Adolf Hitler. Dische has penned a relentless examination of the discrepancies between truths and the pious secrets and lies with which we all live, and of the lengths some people have gone to "spare the next generation the shame of knowledge." While not always subtle, this is a worthwhile novel that vividly illuminates the contemporary German relationship to recent history.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 147 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; F edition (May 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670834920
• ISBN-13: 978-0670834921
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,662,483 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a novella and six short stories, March 14, 2001

By 

elizabeth c (the eastern seaboard, more or less) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pious Secrets (Hardcover)

"Pious Secrets" is an English translation of a collection of German stories. The German title is "Fromme Luegen," which I would translate as "Pious Lies." My copy of the book is in German, so I don't know how the English version reads, but I have heard that Dische, who was raised in America, wrote her stories in English, though she translated them and published them in German. These stories should therefore work well in English.

There are seven stories in the collection, but the title story is as long as the other six together, and could be a short novel in its own right. I only read one of the other stories, "Mr. Lustgarten verliebt sich," or "Mr. Lustgarten Is In Love." That's a short, humorous story about an old man who falls in love with his maid, upsetting his children. The other stories are "A Jewish Lady for Charles Allen," "A Small Suicide Attempt," "The Smuggled Wedding Ring," "Hidden Motives of a Deserter," and "Nanny Jackie's Passion." (I'm translating, so these are probably not the actual titles in the English version.)

The title story deals with a Catholic family in New York City, who try to avoid their German background. The granddaughter thinks her grandfather may be Hitler, and enlists her mother's boyfriend, a pathologist, to help her find the truth. He quickly becomes obsessed with her family's past, which they keep shrouded in secrecy. In some ways, this story is a metaphor for the interpretation of the Third Reich and the Holocaust.

Dische's stories are entertaining on a surface level, and often quite funny, but "Pious Secrets," at least, has a lot of deeper meaning, and so can be read on two levels.