Traces: Stories [Paperback]

Ida Fink (Author), Philip Boehm (Translator), Francine Prose (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 1998

Finalist, National Jewish Book Award 1997
A New York Times Notable Book

Ida Fink's first collection of short stories, A Scrap of Time, was universally hailed as a masterpiece. Traces continues Fink's portrait of life in Nazi-occupied Poland, of men and women otherwise buried in the anonymous statistics of war and genocide.

It is Fink's special art to show that even the Holocaust had its everyday life, where death and daily routine shared the same cramped quarters. In spare, intense prose, Fink records the modest acts of courage, and the delicate shifts in consciousness amidst unimaginable horror. She shows us as well the survivors' desperate search for traces or clues: a torn piece of paper, a half-forgotten address, initials carved into a windowsill, any mention, any at all, of a loved one. At once ter and unsparing, elegiac and ironic, these seemingly simple stories present the complexity of life as it was lived in the darkest days of our century.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

As World War II progresses and the Germans close in, the characters in Fink's (The Journey, LJ 7/92) stories teeter on the edge of an abyss. Young love, the approach of spring, the atmosphere of a measured life in rural Poland about to vanish forever?all mark an interval filled with wistful hope, giving these stories and all of Fink's work their aching and at the same time dazzling clarity. In "The End," two lovers pretend the tanks they hear rumbling in the streets don't really exist. In "The Threshold," Elzbieta's parents have disappeared; when SS officers come to kill fellow Jews in her town, Elzbieta maintains the sense of normalcy, and the story ends with her crossing the room to take her place at the table. In another story, three girlfriends wonder whether they will ever experience love. In the title piece, a playlet, a young woman returns to her town a few years after the war to find traces of her sister, who was reported to have hidden there. An extraordinary literary tension between power and restraint is at work here. Highly recommended for all libraries.?Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In these stories, Fink continues her fictional exploration of the extermination of Polish Jewry. But most of the horrors happen offstage--Fink is less concerned with depicting outright brutality and inhumanity than she is with expressing individual experience. The stories are more or less chronological, beginning with "The End," about a young girl's sense of foreboding when the war is 15 minutes old, and continuing through to the war's aftermath, when survivors are trying to put their lives back together. Each story in between adds another layer. Early on, after the Germans come, parts of life go on as before, but there are roundups and disappearances. People replace the old greetings--"How are you?" with--"Are things quiet in town?" Then come the ghettos, the secret hiding places, and the camps. Fink's spare, understated style is the perfect vehicle for giving voice to the millions whose lives were lost. Mary Ellen Quinn --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks (June 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805045589
• ISBN-13: 978-0805045581
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,426,061 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very great storywriter, December 13, 2011

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Traces: Stories (Paperback)

I am surprised that I m the first person to review this book. I am surprised that Ida Fink is not better known. She is one of the most astonishing storytellers I have ever read.
She writes of people living in the time of the Nazi takeover of Europe, and the Nazi destruction of the Jews. But she does this in a different way from anyone else I know of. She does not write about the camps or the gas- chambers, but rather about the world outside, in the time of waiting before the disaster happens, or in the time of hiding, or in the time of the round-ups or 'aktions' She comes at her stories somewhat obliquely. I cannot really describe how she uses details to suggest and underline the poignancy of the losses, the horror of the murders. She describes ordinary lives and people who suffer extraordinarily evil and disturbing fates.
I do not have the language or the thought at this moment to do her justice.
I feel she is one of the great story- writers of mankind.