I would hate to be among the killers of the Jews and have to face God on Judgment Day!

True story of a teenage Jewish boy during the Holocaust. A powerful, disturbing book.

Finished around 4/10/2007 in advance of my trip to DC and the Holocaust Museum. A powerful, but short, memoir of his time in Aushwitz/Birkenau. I wish he had expanded on many of his thoughts, but the short/direct approach makes it that much more powerful.

Absolutely amazing. This book is haunting and will stay with you for ages.

A truly moving account of one boy's survival of the holocaust.

Like the other Phillip Roth books I've read, this one was pretty much about being Jewish, upper middle class, America, and sex.
It was interesting to see the two parts- "fictional" and "autobiographical" of a fictional character. But it passed so frequently into the absurd- like his wife attacking him in his house, etc- that it was kind of hard for me to get into or to understand. All of the characters are assholes and wimps, and I couldn't care about any of them.
A strange book that was... okay.

This book follows the lives of people in Paris and in a small French town during the German invasion and occupation. The townspeople and the occupiers sometimes see each other as people, sometimes as enemies. The first part mainly describes the exodus, the second part the occupation.
This book was interesting, very well told, and hard to put down. The humanity and non-humanity of both sides was apparent. A shame the author was killed in a concentration camp before it was completed.

This book was kind of hard to get into. I had a hard time at first keeping everyone straight but once I got into I couldn't stop reading. How hard it must have been during this time in France. I was so amazed at the end how the author had planned to have 5 sections but only managed to get the first two done before she was arrested. Am glad the daughters finally read it and had the book printed for all to read.

Suite Francaise is the (fictionalized) account of when the Germans invaded France during WW II. The book is actually only 2/5 of the way finished...the author died in a concentration camp during the war before she could finish it. My one negative thought about the book is that the author never once mentions concentration camps or the Nazi's vendetta against minorites. Considering the author herself was Jewish, I thought it was a big strange she didn't even mention it.

I am in the middle of reading this novel and it is terrific. I read the "French Version Preface" first (at the back of the book) and discovered that the author was Jewish and interned at a concentration camp where she died in 1942, and that the book "Suite Francaise" was really not finished when she died. It is a marvelous read so far, but since I know that it was unfinished, I am not looking forward to the end.

Now that I have finished reading this book, the above entry was right. I'm sorry there is no more to read. The interrelationships between the French countryside residents and the German occupiers was so well written that I felt I was there with them. Human relationships are not always what we expect them to be. How sad that the author was unable to continue writing. It is a book that I won't forget.

BLURB
Suite Française contains two unfinished sections, Storm in June and Dolce, of a planned five-part work about the invasion and occupation of France in World War II. The appendices contain the author's notes for what the other three sections would contain, her correspondence and correspondence about her (especially after she was sent to Auschwitz where she died), and preface to the French edition that outlines her personal history.

This work only recently came to light after Ms. Nemirovsky's surviving daughter, Denise Epstein, began typing out her mother's long-ignored notebook for a memory project.

As you read this work, you'll be responding at two levels: To the monumental tale of a nation unexpectedly brought to its knees and beholden and exposed to its conquerors . . . and to the real human tragedy of a family that would lose both parents while the two daughters survived by being hidden by their governess and those who opposed the Nazis.

it doesnt help that i am obsessed with wwii, but this book was amazing. don't let the comic-book theme bother you. it's about much more than that.

Sort of like writing about the guys who created Superman, but making them gayer. This is an awesome book, that touches on comics, WWII, Judaism, and the intense desire to suck cock.

like an ice cream sandwich, tasty, but not very good for you.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was an instant popular and critical success when it came out in 2000 being nominated for a raft of awards. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001 and Hollywood has been sniffing around it ever since. Michael Chabon the author wrote the only known screenplay, which struggled to reduce a 635-page book to a 2-hour film. At one point, the cast was Toby Maguire (Peter in Spiderman) to play Sam Clay, Natalie Portman (V for Vendetta) to play Rosa Saks and Jude Law to play Joe Kavalier.

The difficulties for the film is what makes the book a joy as it starts in 1938 as Superman bursts on the scene and ends in 1954 as the Kefauver Senate hearings delivers the death blow to a declining comic book industry. A central theme is the roles of the Jews in the comic book industry: it explored the mythology of comic hero and its impact Joe and Sam own struggles and personal journeys form the stories of the Escapist which in turn shape their lives. Sam struggling to come to terms with being Gay and Joe trying to rescue his family stuck in an increasingly bleak Nazi run Prague. It also explores the historical rip off the artists and writers of the period. Superman’s creators did not come into the real money until the blockbuster Superman movies and a court case prised the money out of Hollywood’s coffers. Historical characters from the period from the comic industry and the movie, art and political world some in and out of the story. The Escapist also draws on Joe Kavalier’s training and experience of magic and Houdini type tricks and the impact this has on his life.

The writing is a tour deforce so that you hear, touch and smell the period. Each character has their own voice and even minor characters when they enter the story in a few paragraphs you have their back-story and motives seamlessly woven in so they become real characters. The point of view moves from character to character and no easy option or resolution is allowed as the story builds to the magic trick ending. Scenes are comic one minute and bitterly tragic the next as you join in the roller coaster of their lives. Yes I am going say it…if you only have the chance to read one book this year make it this one, you wont be disappointed.

In a revisionist history, the Jews never settled in Israel and instead settled, among other places, in Sitka, Alaska. As reversion to the US nears, a mystery just begs to be solved by the classic police detective. Londsman is a drunk, cynical officer who's chief is his ex-wife. Chess, Biblical theory, Indians, Yiddish, and all of the classic noir cliches follow the convoluted plot to the end.
I had a little bit of trouble following along with all of the characters and Jewish references in the first half (it probably would have helped if I had been reading it rather than listening to the audio version). I felt like it picked up and moved along, even as it got more complicated, in the second half. By the end, I was really involved in the characters and the plot. This is opposite of many reviews I read, which complained about the second half. It probably helps that I'm very into the noir style and loved how well this book meshed classic noir and Yiddish.
I also loved listening to the interview with Chabon at the end of the audio version, something I normally don't do. I was very interested to hear that the inspiration for the original essay was inspired by the book Say It In Yiddish, a guidbook with no country.

Eh. It was okay. Better than some, worse than others.

A priceless account of Holocaust victims that underwent the horror of Nazi death camps.