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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Open Your Heart & Let This One In, January 30, 2008
This review is from: Regina's Closet: Finding My Grandmother's Secret Journal (Hardcover)
Wow! What an incredible story. It's rare for me to "rave" or to liter my opinions with complimentary adjectives and yet, I have been exposed to a book that absolutely demands both...Regina's Closet: finding my grandmother's secret journal is hauntingly beautiful and filled with the kind of raw emotion that reaches out from the pages and touches the reader in a very tangible way.
Author, Diana Raab shares her grandmother's journal, which follows her difficult and frightening experiences in war torn Poland, events of World War I, witnessing the atrocities committed by soldiers, losing all the possessions, the Nazi invasion, the cramped trains evacuees spent weeks riding only to arrive in cities where the natives did not want them and had no reservations about expressing such in the most hurtful of ways. Even as a child, Regina was not sparred this degrading hostility. Over and over again she is forced to make adult decisions and each time her incredible strength and unusual ability to understand the ways of the world shines through the darkness that surrounded her. The family eventually immigrated to the United States and settled in Brooklyn, New York, where things remained tense between her grandparents, but Diana wouldn't realize until years later, while reading the journal the extent of her grandmother's marital unhappiness.
Meticulously and masterfully, Diana has woven her feelings, fears and experiences throughout this extraordinary narrative and the result is this once-in-a-lifetime novel.
Diana found strength and grace in those handwritten, time worn and yellowing pages. She began to see her grandmother in a new light, as she read about the horrific things she had witnessed and the hardships she had endured as a child, she couldn't help but wonder if these things had played a part in her grandmother's decision to take her own life. Growing up, Diana was always closer to her grandmother...she spent a great deal of time with Regina and had fond memories of things her grandmother shared with her. At ten years old, Diana was home alone with her grandmother when Regina took an overdose of sleeping medication. Years later, Diana would have an exceptional opportunity to reconnect with her grandmother, through the secret journal.
Regina (grandmother) was a true hero..wise beyond her years, with a quiet strength that crossed the generations via the words of her journal and influenced her darling grand-daughter, giving her courage and providing solace and sanctuary. She could not have known that years after penning the diary and many years after her death, her reflections would reach millions of readers. I applaud Diana Raab for recognizing the significance and beauty of her grandmother's words and for taking the initiative to share this intimate journey with us. The author has definitely inherited her grandmother's way with words and allowed her heart to flow freely within the pen strokes that created this literary masterpiece.
I recommend "Regina's Closet: finding my grandmother's secret journal" to all readers, everywhere...don't miss this heart warming, inspiring and life-affirming book-- this is one you will want to share with everyone!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Grandmother-Granddaughter Memoir, December 14, 2007
This review is from: Regina's Closet: Finding My Grandmother's Secret Journal (Hardcover)
Regina's Closet is the story of two women: Diana Raab and her grandmother, Regina Klein. "I was ten years old the morning I found my grandmother dead," Raab writes of the horrifying discovery. Regina Klein killed herself. Why? That was the question that haunted Diana's young life. It wasn't until she was 42, when her mother gave her the 50-page "retrospective journal" her grandmother had written, that Diana began to piece together Regina Klein's life.
Regina's Closet is largely made up of the story of a brave, independent young girl born in the Ukraine in 1903. Eleven at the beginning of World War I, she lived through the terrible days of Russian invasion and occupation, the nightmarish scourge of cholera, and the looming threat of starvation. By 1916, Regina's mother was dead of cholera and her father and brothers had abandoned Regina and her younger sister. The two children managed to get to Vienna, where they were taken into an orphanage. Regina graduated from high school, worked in a bank, and was accepted into medical school. When she ran out of money, she married Samuel Klein and had a child (Eva, Diana's mother). Displaced by the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938, the family fled to Paris and finally to New York, where Samuel Klein opened a store. Eva grew up and married, Diana was born, and the two families lived together in apparent contentment--until that cataclysmic day in 1964 when ten-year-old Diana finds her grandmother dead.
The narrative of Regina Klein's life--richly detailed and told in her own voice through the pages of her journal--seems to be the story of a strong, resourceful, self-confident, self-determined woman. But why did she kill herself? After studying her grandmother's journal and assembling other documents and facts about her life, Raab finally concludes that there was a family history of manic-depressive behavior, in her grandmother, her mother, and also in herself. "After arriving at the end of my grandmother's journal," Raab writes, "I understand how a slow accumulation of a history filled with hardships and horror could result in sudden actions, seemingly inexplicable yet somehow logical, such as suicide."
Throughout Regina's Closet, Raab brackets her grandmother's riveting first-hand account with elements of her own: the story of Diana's childhood adoration of her beautiful grandmother, the young Diana's delight in her first job (a banking job, like that of her grandmother), the adult Diana's own depression when she's diagnosed with breast cancer. She also includes important elements of the chaotic events that shaped Regina's childhood and adult life, so that we have an understanding not just of the personal history but of the social and political history of the times.
This is not an elegant book, for Regina's journal entries are neither lyrical nor stylishly embellished. But Regina's plain, bone-dry prose lays bare the horrific details of war in a way that a more self-consciously artful style could not. And for me, it is the duplex story, the counterpointing of grandmother's and granddaughter's narratives, that makes Regina's Closet an interesting read. "The journey has helped me realize," Raab writes, "that those who have survived severe childhood traumas continue to live with the pain until the day they die. It is with this new understanding that I will hold Regina's soul close to my heart."
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating read from beginning to end, October 6, 2007
This review is from: Regina's Closet: Finding My Grandmother's Secret Journal (Hardcover)
To a whole new generation of young adults in America, World War II is very ancient history and something that they do not perceive as having any relevance to their lives and interests. If for that reason alone, "Regina's Closet" by essayist, memorist and poet Diana M. Raab deserves as large a readership as possible. The source for "Regina's Closet" is a journal kept by Diana's grandmother, plus her own memories and their very special connection as family. It wasn't until the journal fell into Diana's hands that she learned of her grandmother's past, starting with World War I in Poland, to the tragic death of Regina's mother, to her trials and tribulations as an orphan, and her eventual immigration to Vienna and then on to the United States. The entries from Regina's journal are in italic with Diana providing an illuminating commentary. The result is a compelling narrative account of a most remarkable woman who lived through some very harrowing and difficult times. A fascinating read from beginning to end, "Regina's Closet" is a welcome and very highly recommended addition to community library 20th Century Biography collections.
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