A novel, based on the author's own family history, about a prosperous, educated Jewish family living in Radom, Poland, and what happens to them after the Germans invade in 1939.
Hunter writes movingly from many different perspectives, and the only fault to find is that the number of characters — and her fidelity to the real story — can make the narrative confusing at times. But the book moves at a swift, devastating pace, and she makes us care about every soul whose life is threatened.
Historical context is provided by the chunks of exposition that are folded into the personal stories, which are compellingly told. Amid the many accounts of Jews who did not survive the Holocaust, this novel stands out in its depiction of one lucky family who, miraculously, did.
Georgia Hunter presumably loves her family and didn’t want to insult anyone when she set out to write a fictionalized account of how these well-to-do, assimilated Polish Jews survived the Holocaust. Unfortunately, that means her end product emerges as an adventure story about a set of stick figures, each one more beautiful and noble than the next ... To her credit, Hunter smoothly keeps track of this sprawling cast as they move from one temporary hideout to another across five continents, and the narrative rarely flags. The writing, meanwhile, is serviceable. Hunter’s overreliance on clichés is rescued by occasional flares of strong sensory descriptions ... Most powerfully and beautifully, the novel conveys the family’s love for Radom ... Yet she failed to take advantage of the opportunities fiction offers for depth of characterization. She could have created flesh-and-blood people with faults and weaknesses—and then claimed that, after all, it was only fiction and her relatives in real life were much nicer.
