Review: Craving Flight by Tamsen Parker

3.5 stars

Tzipporah Berger is thirty-seven, once-divorced and newly part of an Orthodox Jewish community. When she mentions to the rabbi's wife that she's looking to remarry, gruff local butcher Elan Klein is put forward as a candidate. He ticks all the right boxes for Tzipporah, and she's hopeful that he might even be able give her what she needs in the bedroom, but BDSM isn't really something you can bring up between "How do you feel about children?" and "How strictly do you keep kosher?" in an Orthodox courtship. Marriage is always a struggle, but it proves even more so for two people who don't know each other very well outside of the marriage bed, and who originally come from two very different worlds. 

Tzipporah was such a vulnerable character, as was Elan towards the end, and basically Craving Flight emotionally gutted me. Some of that was in a good way, but it was also partly in a it-all-ended-too-soon-and-I-haven't-made-peace-with-everything way. I found it to be a very emotional read, and I don't feel like I can rationalise all those feelings very well, so bear with me. 

Elan was a gentle giant - gotta love a gentle giant - and the brusque care he showed Tzippporah was touching. Nonetheless, as a ba'alat teshuva (a secular Jew who has chosen to become Orthodox), she struggles with feelings of inadequacy, which are inadvertently exasperated by Elan and his family. Even though these feelings mostly surround matters of religious observance, it's something I think most women can relate to, as we're socially conditioned to link our worth to our relationships with other people. 

Both Elan and Tzipporah are fully-grown adults who have been married once before, and who each have a life and profession of their own. Tzipporah works as a professor, and has to constantly defend her decision to live a life that people outside the community - including her own family - see as oppressive. When it came to age, gender and religion, I thought that Craving Flight was measured and thoughtful, which is why the quick turnaround to a HEA at the end was such a shock to the system. 

I'll pick up the odd BDSM book occasionally, even if I don't read very many of them, but I've rarely felt so uncomfortable about the sex scenes in a book before. I started to skim over them, because they were just too much for me, both in terms of the kink itself and the characters' interactions. It wasn't that there was a power imbalance between them - they were all clear on that front - but...Tzipporah just became so emotional, and Elan was still so inscrutable. We never get to see his reactions to being a Dom; the focus is always on Tzippoarah, and it was just hurt my heart to see her laid bare emotionally. 

I think I could have coped with it better if I'd had more insight into Elan as a character. We did get to see some emotion from him towards the end, but having been been such an unemotional character up until that point, it came as a bit of a bombshell that I didn't expect, and didn't recover from. 

I don't know why I had such strong reactions to Craving Flight, or whether other readers can expect the same. Nor do I even know whether this review will even be at all useful for someone deciding whether or not to read the book, but here it is anyway. I would recommend giving it a go, especially since it's free on both US and Australian Amazon. 

Non-Fiction Review: The Rescuer by Dara Horn

Recommended

Dora Horn's The Rescuer is a short non-fiction piece about the efforts of an American, Varian Fry, to save cultural and intellectual luminaries at risk from the Nazis, either because they were Jewish, dissidents, or both.

Churchill once said that "great and good are seldom the same man", and Horn illustrates his meaning almost perfectly. Varian Fry was a great man, and he worked within a system governed by great people, all the way up to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. The people he saved were also great people: Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Andre Breton and Claude Levi-Strauss, to name only a few. But Horn highlights that - no matter how history has recorded these people and their deeds - the term good is sometimes ill-fitting.

Unlike the more familiar story of Oskar Schindler, who, throughout the 1960s, was propped up financially by donations from the people he had saved, those rescued by Fry did not wish to maintain contact with him after the war. Nor did many demonstrate any gratefulness for the immense risk he had undertaken; several even put his operations in danger with their vanity and self-absorption.

And, even though Fry was doing good work and ultimately saved over 2000 people, he was a troubled man, so much so that one of his children still refuses to discuss him. Another ascribes his erratic behaviour to bipolar disorder. As Horn also points out, there is also a certain irony in his position as a Righteous Gentile. He helped people to escape the Nazis' brutal eugenics programmes, but, in order to do so, subjected these people to another form of eugenics; only people making the most important contributions to the "culture of Europe" would be considered. 

As for the statesmen of the American government, they tried to have Fry recalled when his work was no longer in line with their politics (i.e. when they realised they were actually going to have to take in all these people Fry was saving!). When Fry refused to cease and desist, the State Department tipped off the Vichy regime about Fry and his team, leading to their arrests. 

Going in, I thought Fry's story would be presented in a self-congratulatory American-saves-the-world manner, but I couldn't have been more wrong. In fact, for Horn and other who have studied Fry, this is why is story has received so little attention, comparative to those like Oskar Schindler. It blurs the black-and-white binaries through which we see the Second World War. Whereas normally we have the good, heroic Americans (and other Allies) as the counterpoint to the evil Nazis, here the Americans do not come out smelling so fresh. Not only did they dob Fry in to the Nazis' puppet government in France, their actions make a mockery of our two core narratives when it comes to the Holocaust: that we didn't know a genocide was occurring, and, that, even if we had known, we would have been powerless to stop it. This second assumption rests on the fallacy that people would want to do anything, which then, as now, is not necessarily true. 

We like the story of the Righteous Gentile, but the truth is that most Gentiles were decidedly unrighteous, even when they had a level of awareness of what was happening to the Jews across Europe. And, make no mistake, Fry's experience demonstrates that the implementation of the Final Solution was an open secret.

In 1935, Fry witnessed a pogrom along the Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin, which, according to one of his co-rescuers, contributed to his decision to go to France years later. At the time though, Fry reported on the violence for The New York Times. In 1942, he wrote another piece, this time for The New Republic, in which he chronicled a 1935 meeting with Ernst Hanfstaengl, the Nazis' chief foreign press officer. Hanfstaengl told Fry, quite plainly, that he and the 'moderate' Nazis wanted to expel the Jews, while Hitler's 'radical' wing had their hearts set on mass murder. Neither was Fry was not the only person reporting these developments to the American newspapers. 

As for the American government, they agreed to Fry's presence in France, if only tacitly, because they knew that the alternative was losing these great brains to extermination camps. But, even so, they took almost few actions to offer refuge to other European Jews because both the government and the general population were scared of opening the door to 'floods' of Jewish refugees, as the case of the SS St. Louis shows. 

The great strength of Horn's writing lies in her ability to make the reader examine these things in a new light, and she does so by conveying her own conflicted feelings. In one instance, she writes: 

The inevitability of murder...is the premise of all narratives of Holocaust rescue - and part of what makes me so uncomfortable with them. The assumption in such stories is that the open maw of death for Europe's Jews and dissidents was something like a natural disaster. These stories, in some sense, force us - people removed from that time by generations - to ask the wrong questions, the kind of questions we might ask about a tsunami or an epidemic. Someone has to die, the thinking goes, and the only remaining dilemma is who will get the last seat on the lifeboat or the last vaccine. But these questions fall short by assuming that the perpetrators were irrelevant. As long as we are questioning the choices that are made, shouldn't we be considering the possibility of the Holocaust not happening at all? If someone was in the position to choose whether to save person A or person B, shouldn't whole societies have been in the position to reject the notion of genocide altogether? Why didn't everyone become Denmark? (Loc. 387-396)

I read The Rescuer in the first days of the new year, but Horn's rendering of Fry's story and the Holocaust in general have stuck with me these past months, invoked by things I come across in my everyday life. First of all, there are the people Fry saved, who have been popping up everywhere, even though Levi-Strauss was the only one I had any awareness of before starting this book.

But then, there is also something greater, something I sometimes wonder when I open the newspaper and read about Europe's current refugee crisis, Australia's despicable treatment of asylum seekers or Trump and the rise of the far right in the United States. If we tell ourselves these comforting fictions that we didn't know, that we were powerless, are we more likely to ignore the cries for help that are occurring now, or in the future? After all, as George Santayana said, "those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.".  

Review: True Pretenses by Rose Lerner

4.5 stars

The hero of True Pretenses, Ash Cohen, and his brother Rafe are successful con men, so it's a surprise when Rafe decides he wants to live an honest life. Ash is upset and perplexed but he starts looking for a way to give Rafe what he wants. When he comes across Lydia Reeve, she seems like the answer to his prayers. With her father dead and her brother uninterested in the family's patronage of the local town, Lydia desperately needs her marriage portions released to her so she can continue to fund her charitable and political work. All Rafe has to do is make her like him, and then propose a marriage of convenience. But things become complicated when Lydia decides she would rather marry Ash, and Ash is forced to reveal a long-held secret that sends his brother running.

Even though Ash is the thieving son of a Jewish prostitute (his words, not mine), and Lydia is a aristocratic lady and consummate hostess, the two have a lot in common. They've both spent their lives dedicated to their younger brothers, and are cut adrift when their brothers no longer want such a close, quasi-parental relationship. Both also are used to working hard to ensure that people like them, and are unsure of who they are beneath this. Their interactions were witty and touching and, overall, they were one of the best couples I've read in a long time. I found their honesty with each other particularly refreshing. Unlike many characters, particularly heroines, both Ash and Lydia were mature, sensible and did not dissemble.

However, the stand-out aspect of this book was, for me, Ash and Rafe's Jewish heritage. It places them a precarious position, so much so that Ash has banned them from speaking Yiddish even when they are alone, and stays celibate so that no-one will know that he is circumcised. It was another stark reminder to my privileged little self how the long and bloody history of the European Jews neither starts nor ends with pogroms and the Holocaust. Lydia is forced to confront her prejudices; when speaking to Rafe, she makes a comment about blood libel, the persistent rumours and accusations that Jews stole Christian children to use for nefarious purposes in rituals. Rafe angrily replies:

"Stories like yours aren't real. They're an excuse to murder Jews in the street and feel good about it. What would we want your children for, when we can barely feed our own? If that filthy slander gets out in the town, they'll hang Ash to a lamppost." Loc. 1332

A few days after I finished True Pretenses I came across an article on We Need Diverse Books where 7 Jewish authors speak about their experiences of anti-Semitism, and together these two texts made me re-think the way I thought of anti-Semitism. When there was a prominent incident of anti-Semitism against schoolchildren in Sydney last year, I was befuddled, unable to understand how people could be holding this ugly sentiment when I had never seen or heard it, but I now realise I've just never noticed it before, because it wasn't directed at me and so I was oblivious to the micro-aggressions happening around me, or that I perpetrated myself. 

Moving back to True Pretenses, I felt the ending was not as strong as the rest of the book, but that could have been because it was past midnight and I was bleary-eyed and yet still didn't want it too end. I can't put my finger on what could have been done differently or better, I just felt like it was a fairly standard ending didn't conform to the rest of the book, which had been so devoid of tropes. However, the effect on my enjoyment of the book was negligible, and I'm only really bringing it up as a justification for not giving it 5 stars. I have dilly-dallied between giving this book 4.5 and 5 stars for the last week, and it's made me realise I should probably codify my rating system somewhere, so I'll be working on that next.

Overall, True Pretenses was the second of Rose Lerner's books I've read, and the first, A Lily Among Thorns, was equally wonderful. I'm excited to see what she produces in the future, and I really hope that Ash's little brother Rafe gets his own book.

Review: Bed of Spices by Barbara Samuel (Or, Evil German Grammar vs. Medieval German Romance)

I have a big German examination at university this week and I need to master adjective endings before I sit it.  Unfortunately, adjectives in German are notoriously tricky.  Mark Twain, in his essay The Awful German Language, wrote: 

"Now observe the Adjective. Here was a case where simplicity would have been an advantage; therefore, for no other reason, the inventor of this language complicated it all he could. When we wish to speak of our "good friend or friends," in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one form....When a German gets his hands on an adjective, he declines it, and keeps on declining it until the common sense is all declined out of it....He says, for instance: 

SINGULAR
Nominative -- Mein guter Freund, my good friend.
Genitive -- Meines guten Freundes, of my good friend.
Dative -- Meinem guten Freund, to my good friend.
Accusative -- Meinen guten Freund, my good friend. 

PLURAL
N. -- Meine guten Freunde, my good friends.
G. -- Meiner guten Freunde, of my good friends.
D. -- Meinen guten Freunden, to my good friends.
A. -- Meine guten Freunde, my good friends. 

Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize those variations, and see how soon he will be elected....I have shown what a bother it is to decline a good (male) friend; well this is only a third of the work, for there is a variety of new distortions of the adjective to be learned when the object is feminine, and still another when the object is neuter....Difficult? -- troublesome? -- these words cannot describe it. I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective."

You can imagine how long my German practice lasted before I turned to a romance novel for solace, especially since it was Easter and if there is one thing you should not be doing over a holiday, it is German declensions. I'm pretty sure that was of of the prescriptions of Lent, right up there with not eating red meat. So I read Bed of Spices by Barbara Samuel instead and it was one of the best books I've read in ages.  As you can see from the cover below, Bed of Spices is an old school romance. When readers express nostalgia for the 'classic' romances of the 8os and 90s, I feel like this book is exactly what they are pining for. It has all the epicness we expect from historical romances from that era, but also avoids most of their pitfalls.  (Except costume anachronisms on the cover, because we all know the most important thing in old school romance covers is that the model's biceps/chest are shown off the the greatest advantage possible. And if that means having your medieval Jewish doctor wearing a torque that belongs on a Roman-era Celt, then that's okay.)

When the Black Death wipes out his university town in France, Solomon ben Jacob returns home to German-speaking Strasbourg and furthers his physican's training by helping out Helga, the local midwife and healer. Rica, the daughter of a knight, also comes to Helga for instruction, and for help with her duties as her father's hostess and chaletaine. The two are attracted to each other from their first meeting, but they both know there can be no future for them. Rica's father has betrothed her to one of his men, and even if he had not, Solomon is Jewish. To marry outside his community would cause trouble with the bigoted townsfolk, who are already looking for a scapegoat for the enroaching pestilence. Rica and Solomon's story is the kind of sweeping and poignant narrative you just don't see enough, where time passes, loved ones die, continents are traversed and characters mature before the final Happily Ever After.  

What makes it exceptional, though, is that this saga is combined with with unusually progressive depictions of gender. Many of the heroes of classic romances are Tarzanesque, both in their speech and their treatment of women. Solomon, by contrast is eloquent and erudite, as well as being respectful of Rica's autonomy. Although there is no outright villian, even those who mistreat or attempt to control the female characters are three-dimensional characters, who exhibit remorse and depth of  feeling. Rica herself is a self-possessed heroine who doesn't need to be saved over and over again, but isn't adverse to asking for help when she needs it. And it wasn't just gender that Samuel dealt with compassionately, but religion as well, and from this sprung some of the book's most interesting insights.  

Overall, Bed of Spices was a definite keeper, the kind of book that absorbs you so thoroughly that your mind keeps wandering back to it after you've finished. Previously, when people  told me that romance novels are plotless drivel with no literary value and asked why I waste my time on them when I'm "really otherwise quite intelligent" (yes, somebody said that to me), I've asked them to come back and finish the discussion after they've read a book by the likes of Joanna Bourne, Meredith Duran, Courtney Milan or Judith James.  Nobody's ever actually sought to overturn their preconceptions, of course, but I will now add Bed of Spices to my mental list of reading required before people are allowed to badmouth the genre.  

And now, meine gute Freundinnen (that's nominative feminine plural, in case you were wondering, and if there are any guys reading this then that's just tough luck), I'm off to memorise three tables worth of adjective endings.  Wish me Viel Glück!