The White Rose: A Novel [Hardcover]

Jean Hanff Korelitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 19, 2005

Passion, infidelity, social climbing, and one very special white rose weave a seductive narrative in this intelligent and tender novel.

At forty-eight, Marian Kahn, a professor of history at Columbia, has reached a comfortable perch. Married, wealthy, and the famed discoverer of that eighteenth-century adventuress, Lady Charlotte Wilcox, she ought to be content. Instead, she is horrified to find herself profoundly in love with twenty-six-year-old Oliver, the son of her oldest friend. When Marian's cousin, the snobbish Barton, announces his engagement to Sophie, a graduate student in Marian's department, Marian, Oliver and Sophie find their affiars woefully entangled, and their hearts turned in unfamiliar directions. All three of them will learn that love may seldom be straightforward, but it's always a gift.

From the West Village to the Upper East Side, from the Hamptons to Millbrook, The White Rose is at once a nuanced and affectionate reimagining of Strauss' beloved opera, Der Rosenkavalier, and a mesmerizing novel of our own time and place.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Korelitz, known for her intelligent thrillers (The Sabbathday River, etc.), strikes off in a new direction with this mordant story of aging, love and self-discovery, a reimagining of the Strauss opera Der Rosenkavalier set in upper-class Jewish New York City. Marian Kahn, gracefully aging at 48, is a respected history professor at Columbia, author of a bestselling book of popular history and solidly ensconced in a satisfactory if not brilliant marriage when suddenly she's swept away by the wild but dangerous joy of an affair with the son of her oldest friend. Twenty-six-year-old Oliver, owner of a flower shop called the White Rose, is truly in love, but when he meets graduate student and heiress Sophie Klein, the fiancée of Marian's pompous cousin, Barton Ochstein, he's blindsided and must question his still strong love for Marian. Sophie is swept away, too, by the knowledge that she may want something more out of life than the academic satisfaction she derives from the study of her own White Rose, a group of German dissidents who agitated against the Nazis. The belief that love always involves sacrifice and is worth the sacrifice it demands drives this warm, worldly novel. Even when their own comfort is at stake, Korelitz's characters succumb to generous impulses, making this a satisfying, emotionally rich read.
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From The New Yorker

This novel transfers the plot of "Der Rosenkavalier" from Vienna to pre-millennial Manhattan. The Marschallin of the opera has become a professor at Columbia, married and nearing fifty, who is also the author of a best-selling book about an eighteenth-century courtesan. The Marschallin's lover, Octavian, is, in this version, a young florist. The precipitating event is her social-climbing cousin's announcement of his engagement to a graduate student in her department who is from an élite New York family. Things get more complicated when the florist, suitably armed with roses, falls for the same girl. The series of coincidental meetings and near-misses that ensues strains credulity more on the page than it does when sung. Still, Korelitz is alert both to New York's social geometry and to the melancholy that underlies the glittering surface of her model.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Miramax (January 19, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401352316
• ISBN-13: 978-1401352318
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,082,665 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely satisfying!, December 29, 2004

By 

ZippyBooks123 "ZippyBooks123" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The White Rose: A Novel (Hardcover)

I truly enjoyed reading The White Rose. The pace of the book was just perfect: lots of background, in-depth character analysis, but enough action to keep me engrossed in the plot. Marian is quite a believable person; it was easy to identify with her struggles. I loved Oliver, and cheered him on, especially later in the book (can't say what he does, exactly, or it will give away the surprise) when the fate of the woman he loves rests squarely on his ability to foil a plan. The plot is intricate, and the ending is surprising. I highly recommend The White Rose.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a romantic comedy you can feel good about loving, January 30, 2005

By 

Meg Cox "journalist/author/quilter" (Princeton, New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: The White Rose: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book is a breezy, fun read but it also makes you think. There are elements of social comedy and farce, as well as delicious accounts of sex. It's a very hopeful book that cheers for its middle-aged heroine without bashing men. It's a book where (almost) all the characters grow from and are strengthened by the ordeals they endure. There is history here, and scholarship, and a social conscious, but mostly it's just a fun romp.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A perfect bloom!, June 10, 2005

By 

HeyJudy "heyjudy" (East Hampton, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: The White Rose: A Novel (Hardcover)

THE WHITE ROSE is everything a novel should be. This is a beautifully written book, and author Jean Hanff Korelitz is to be congratulated.

The story is rich and complex. There are a variety of plots and subplots, each of which is compelling enough to be the center of its own novel.

The story gets off to a slow start, which serves neither the author nor her readers well. Yet once one immerses oneself in these characters, THE WHITE ROSE is touching and gripping.

There are a multitude of love affairs described, with excellent descriptions of passion.

There are different versions of the story of the White Rose, including the real one about a small group of upper class Germans who resisted the Nazis.

There are details about the highest levels of academia and scholarship, and about the lifestyles of those New Yorkers who, quietly and without ostentation, are very, very rich.

THE WHITE ROSE is filled with amazing insights, so incisive and so clear that these literally are breathtaking.

The only quibbles go to the author's descriptions of cooking. In one scene, on a day she describes as warm, a character puts on a tweed jacket and necktie to reduce a sauce and boil some pasta. Please! Who wears wool to labor over a hot stove? In another scene, a different character cooks a brisket in less than an hour. It takes more than an hour simply to prep a brisket, and the cooking needs four to six hours. Didn't anyone associated with the manuscript--author, agent, editor--have a clue?

The other issue is the author's sense of direction. The route she suggests using between Manhattan and East Hampton is preposterous. Once again, this weird discrepancy stops the lovely flow of her story.

Yet as a book, THE WHITE ROSE is the finest use of the metaphor of the rose as an example both of the life cycle and a thing of pure beauty since the excellent novel THE ROSE GROWER was published in 2000.

THE WHITE ROSE is a perfect bloom.