The Museum of Extraordinary Things: A Novel
Alice
Hoffman
Scribner,
2014. 384 pp. US $27.99
Coralie Sardie is the daughter of the sinister
impresario behind The Museum of Extraordinary Things, a Coney Island boardwalk
freak show that thrills the masses. An exceptional swimmer, Coralie appears as
the Mermaid in her father's "museum," alongside performers like the
Wolfman, the Butterfly Girl, and a one-hundred-year-old turtle. One night
Coralie stumbles upon a striking young man taking pictures of moonlit trees in
the woods off the Hudson River.
Holocaust Mothers and Daughters
Federica K. Clementi; Shulamit Reinharz, fwd.
Brandeis University Press, 2013. 392 pp. US$40.00
In this brave and original work, Federica Clementi focuses on the mother-daughter bond as depicted in six works by women who experienced the Holocaust, sometimes with their mothers, sometimes not. The daughters' memoirs, which record the "all-too-human" qualities of those who were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis, show that the Holocaust cannot be used to neatly segregate lives into the categories of before and after.
Clementi's discussions of differences in social status, along with the persistence of antisemitism and patriarchal structures, support this point strongly, demonstrating the tenacity of trauma - individual, familial, and collective - among Jews in twentieth-century Europe.
Clementi's discussions of differences in social status, along with the persistence of antisemitism and patriarchal structures, support this point strongly, demonstrating the tenacity of trauma - individual, familial, and collective - among Jews in twentieth-century Europe.
Jewish Book Council
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