Never underestimate the power of friendship at any stage in life. That’s one of the lessons from Michael Frank’s beautiful portrait of the wise and charming nonagenarian, Stella Levi, one of the last remaining Holocaust survivors from the vanished Sephardic community of Juderia on the Greek island of Rhodes. In relaying her life story, Mr. Frank has pulled off something special: One Hundred Saturdays is a sobering yet heartening book about how friendship, remembrance, and being heard can help assuage profound dislocation and loss. It is also a reminder that the ability to listen thoughtfully is a rare and significant gift ... Complemented by Maira Kalman’s vibrant illustrations, One Hundred Saturdays re-creates the world of Stella’s youth in the tight-knit Juderia ... More than seven decades after liberation, Ms. Levi’s detailed recall is chilling ... Mr. Frank, a beautifully unobtrusive interlocutor, reminds us that 'memory is not history.' One Hundred Saturdays, however subjective, evokes a lost world that deserves not to be forgotten. It is a deeply affecting addition to the literature of the Holocaust.
Maira Kalman’s illustrations, heavily influenced by Matisse with their deceptive simplicity, rich colors and delicate textures, are perfect complements to Levi’s story, portraying vanished scenes from life on Rhodes before the Holocaust. Together with the text of Frank’s beautiful book, they create a sensitive portrait of an extraordinary woman. Fiercely independent, keenly intelligent and remorselessly honest, Levi refuses to be defined solely by the tragedy of her youth. Her life has been a constant evolution, and her final years are being lived with the same vitality as her earliest ones.
Over the course of six years, she and the author built an unlikely friendship as Stella shared her most beloved and horrific memories, from her idyllic childhood with her grandmothers to her adolescent friendships and adventures on the island to her most traumatic experiences of deportation and surviving the war...Accompanied by illustrations from Maira Kalman, Frank writes Stella’s harrowing journey with care, and the result is this beautifully crafted true story of friendship, love, survival, and redemption.
... compelling and unique ... The central figure, Stella Levi, is intensely captivating and a woman with remarkable insight ... While memory is fallible after so long, the author always includes relevant historical context and research to fill in and fact-check Stella’s stories, but it’s done in a way that still honors her version. Illustrations by Kalman also bring this world to life ... An essential read for Jewish history and memoir fans. Stella is a compelling character for anyone to meet.
At 99, a Holocaust survivor describes her harrowing experience...The narrative, interspersed with Kalman’s color paintings of scenes from Levi’s life, is an evocative and heartbreaking work...Readers only intermittently get a sense of the connection between Levi and Frank, and based on the evidence presented here, it doesn’t transcend far beyond that of reporter and subject...The story Levi tells, however, is gut-wrenching in its horrifying familiarity, and Frank presents it well—even if the concept of 100 Saturdays comes across as a storytelling gimmick...A brutal yet ultimately hopeful account from one of history’s darkest episodes.
Frank revisits the life of nonagenarian and Holocaust survivor Stella Levi in his incandescent latest...The two struck up a friendship after meeting in New York City in 2015, and, over six years, Frank writes that Levi became to him 'a time traveler who would invite me to travel with her'...Even with its sobering revelations, Frank’s narrative shines with an ebullience, thanks to the 'unusually rich, textured, and evolving' life of his utterly enchanting muse...The result provides an essential, humanist look into a dark chapter of 20th-century history.
