Customer Reviews

Too Many Men

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

...This book is something quite remarkable: a trip to Poland taken through the eyes and ears and hearts of father and daughter Ruth and Edek Rothwax. Rarely have I encountered two characters so perfectly realized. As the child of Holocaust survivors, Ruth is a symphonic collection of tics, habits, rituals and agonies; she's an emotional land mine, filled with unanswered questions, with answers to questions she didn't know existed, with a somehow genetic knowledge of events that pre-date her existence. Loss and sorrow and a fear of love/attachment are as much a part of Ruth as her vital organs.

Edek, astonishingly, is a man who never walks when he can run; who can eat massive quantities of food and yet always find room for a little something more. Despite his age (eight-one) and the horrors of the first third of his life, he is a man with an enormous capacity for love and kindness, for empathy and, of course, for a bottomless sorrow that cannot suppress his innate optimism and his fundamental decency.

Too Many Men (an unfortunately misleading title--my only, minor, quibble with an otherwise enormously compelling book) has many wonderfully ingenious aspects to it, not the least of which is the lovely idea that a woman could create a successful business based entirely on her ability to write letters for any and every occasion. This is not only a bit of acutely relevant social commentary on a lost art, it is also, for many of us, representative of the ultimate dream career. It is a brilliant invention.

The fact of Auschwitz (scene of the murder of some 22 million people) being turned into something very like a theme park as a result of Spielberg's Schindler's List is enough to make one's blood chill, and this is conveyed powerfully through Ruth's ever more horrified reactions to what she sees and hears as she and her father travel there, revisiting the places (including Birkenau) where her parents were imprisoned during the war.

There are moments of mad humor throughout the book that have the effect not only of lightening the burden of a father and daughter working hard to reconnect to each other, but also of the true horror of the historical facts of the genocide--all of which are stored in the brain of a woman who cannot get enough information about the atrocities, in a neverending effort to comprehend how and why this could have happened.

This is not difficult reading, which is a testament to author Brett's immense talent and humor, but it is enormously important reading--not just for those interested in the lasting effects of the Holocaust, but for anyone who admires a finely crafted book.
My highest recommendation.

I thoroughly enjoyed Brett's novel, even though the ending left me wondering what would happen next. I enjoyed the gutsy Ruth and her unforgiving attitude about what her parents had endured. Sometimes she seemed to go over the top and I would think--"Lighten up!", but the overall effect was necessary for her character.

I loved her Father, who made me laugh and remember my grandparents, also from an East European country, who (although they lived in the states for many years) still pronounced many words in their wacky endearing way.

The Hoss character I still can't put to rest. But, it made the novel interesting, even if I don't quite understand why Brett used this device and what we're actually supposed to assume he was. Was he just the imagination of an overwrought angry Jewish woman, determined to relive her parents pain? Whatever. Hoss still provided an avenue for Brett to give us another perspective that would otherwise be unavailable to today's writer. And, in that sense, I applaud Brett's imagination.

I did feel Brett cut the ending short, making me think there must be a sequel coming. But maybe this is just another one of her devices to keep the reader wondering and thinking about the book.

There were any number of coincidences in the book that could be seen as too fantastic to believe. But, even so, this was a really great read! Very deceptive title, especially for the nonreader. My husband was very curious because I don't read "romance" novels and he couldn't figure out what kind of book I was reading late into the night!

Keep 'em coming Lily!

I was up nights reading this book and was really miserable when it ended because I was so into these characters. I felt like I knew them well and wanted to know more about them. Ruth Rothwax, the daughter of a houlicaust surviver wants to take her father back to Poland, where he has not been since his family was taken by the Germans to a concentration camp. Her father goes on this journey with his daughter, although he's not really sure why she is so adament about going there -- after all, his memory of the horror of that time is with him every day and he doesn't need to go back to Poland to relive it. Ruth, however, a very successful business woman living in New York City, needs to know what happened and had always received very little information from her parents (her mother was also in a concentration camp) because it's not something they will talk about. The journey that Ruth and her father take is a breathtaking example of a realtionship between a father and daughter, as well as a very vivid history of what really took place in Poland during WWII.

I just loved this book. It's funny and beautiful, and grabs you right from the first page. Lily Brett's characters are so wonderfully three dimensional you can almost smell them, and they stay with you for a long time. I read this book several months ago, and I still get goosebumps when I think about it. If you're not a big reader, don't be daunted by this book's size ~ you'll sail through it, and want more! And although the spectre of the Holocaust is sometimes quite tangible in its pages, you definitely don't have to be Jewish to feel all the powerful emotions this book arouses. I'm not Jewish, but have read many books about this terrible time, and somehow, I think this book gave me the greatest sense of the tragedy of the Holocaust. This really is a fine book.

If you want to confuse the book purchasing public, call a book about a woman's trip back to Poland with her Auschwitz-survivor father "Too Many Men." Then, to bamfoozle the "Sex in the City" fans who might be attracted by the title, give the book a sepia-toned, old-fashioned-ish jacket. ThePageTurner is bewildered about this play-pattern mismatch and hopes that it does not cost Lily Brett's good novel too many readers.

Ruth Rothwax is an Australian with a successful business in New York. She and her 81-year-old father meet in Warsaw for a trip Ruth has wanted to make for a long time--a trip back to her family's roots. This is really Ruth's trip, and you get the feeling that her father, Edek, is only revisiting the past for her sake.

Poland is awful. The people are still anti-Semitic, there is nasty anti-Jewish graffiti in every city they visit, and Krakow, where "Schindler's List" was filmed, has developed a thriving tourist industry out of Auschwitz, which now boasts heating and vending machines. Ruth and Edek attend an eerie Jewish cabaret with Polish performers impersonating Jews because, of course, in Poland there are no Jews left.

Ruth is horrified and angry at it all, but Edek, the actual survivor, is more easygoing and forgiving about what they see. He chats cheerfully with Poles whom Ruth would like to throttle, and even enjoys the Jewish floor show. Ruth's edgier than usual because her subconscious has been invaded by former SS Commandant Rudolf Hoess. Hoess was in charge of Auschwitz, and he has been condemned to the lower tier of heaven (there is no actual hell). In a devious twist, he cannot move up until he passes the racial sensitivity class which has been going on for the 56 years since his execution. If his conversations with Ruth are any indication, this is a placement for all eternity.

Lily Brett subtly notes the ironies between plush modern American or Australian life and the tough lives of people throughout Poland today. There's also the contrastor lack thereofin Polish attitudes toward Jews pre-WWII and post fall of the Wall. There are some really creepy scenes, such as when Ruth and Edek visit his family's old apartment and find things left by the family still in use. The old people who now occupy the apartment behave as rapaciously as any stereotypical Jews.

I wish there were some Poles in this book who were not self-righteous anti-Semites in complete denial about Poland's ugly role in the Holocaust. Both Ruth and the reader are shocked when Edek is attracted to a sprightly Polish widow with bright dyed hair and plenty of sex drivehow can this vulgar woman be the first female he wants since the death of his adored wife? And yet you have to admire him. He is a survivor, and still alive to many more possibilities in his future than his daughter is.

This is an interesting, thoughtful book, a deceptively smooth read.

Yes, without a doubt, "Too Many Men" is the best novel I've ever read. I want more, a sequel. Lily Brett is tremendous at character development and at stirring the readers' emotions, from laughing until you cry to anger to pity to anticipation to deep sympathy - and everything in between. This should be required reading for students. It is for everyone, male or female, young or old. Not often does a novel hook me from the first page, but this one did, and it didn't let me go, even when I finished it. Ruth and Edek, her father, are real to me, and Edek is about the most comical and adorable character I've met. Travel back to Poland with them and recall with them the days of WWII concentration camps. There's never a dull moment. I would love to have a hardback copy, because, unlike most books, I know I'll want to read this one over and over through the years. At last: literature! Congratulations and many thanks to Lily Brett. And a plea for her to let us share more in the lives of Ruth and Edek.

I have not been able to put this novel down, since it arrived from Amazon two days ago. So many memories of Poland and Lodz came flooding back. I have walked those streets and can still smell that air.

She dealt with many of the problems that I dealt with when I wrote my own book, A Stairwell in Lodz. How do you write about the horror? Lily Brett's use of a ghost was a unique way of presenting Holocaust history.

Why couldn't this book have been called, Return, instead of Too Many Men?

Already a worldwide literary phenomenon with her books topping international bestseller charts, this is Lily Brett's first novel to be published in the United States. It is our loss that we've had to wait so long.

"Too Many Men" introduces Ruth Rothwax, the daughter of Holocaust survivors ( as is the author). A successful New York business woman, Ruth is taking Edek, her 80-year-old father, back to Poland to revisit the scenes of his youth and incarceration - to Lodz, Krakow, and Auschwitz. She plans and executes the trip very much as she calendars her life, with optimal organization, note taking, double checking.

She is seeking answers to her parents catastrophic past, trying to understand the unthinkable.

But despite Ruth's care in planning she could not anticipate what was not predictable or expected. She had not anticipated seeing profuse anti-Semitic graffiti or hearing Auschwitz referred to as a "museum."

In this extraordinary journey of the tormented Ruth and her father readers come face to face with the atrocities of which human being are capable and also learn that there is solace even in pain.

This is a book not to be missed, a story that had to be told.

It took me a long time to "accept" this book.I endorse all the comments made above. I even grew to see how masterly the interaction between Hoess and Ruth was. Brett continues her humourous traditions and once again opens our eyes to the horror of the Holocaust.The Polish perspective was unknown to me and I never want to go to Lodz !! Her earlier novels about life in Melborne during the 50s-80s are sad and funny too

It IS a misleading title, but other than that, I adored Too Many Men. In contrast to the reviewer who found it too long, I found it one of those books where I kept noticing the diminishing number of pages left, and wishing it would go on forever. I felt like I was living Ruth's life with her.