Review by New York Times Review
SOME stories need to be told in a whisper. "Blooms of Darkness," the Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld's majestic and humane new novel, takes place in an unnamed Ukrainian city during World War II. As the Germans begin liquidating the city's Jewish population, Julia, a pharmacist whose husband has already been sent to a labor camp, smuggles her 11-year-old son, Hugo, out of the ghetto. Their journey through the sewer pipes leads them to a house on the outskirts of town, where Julia entrusts Hugo to the care of an old friend, Mariana, before taking flight herself. Mariana, as Hugo will discover, is a prostitute, while the house - known simply as "the Residence" - is a brothel catering to the Nazi occupiers. For the next year and a half, Hugo's world will contract to the bedroom in which Mariana cossets, neglects and ultimately seduces him, and the closet in which he hides when her clients come knocking. A younger writer might be tempted to burden such a story with the cumbersome framing devices, manifold shifts in point of view and temporal dislocations that pass, in this age, for dazzling style. But Appelfeid is 78 years old, the author of more than 40 books and a Holocaust survivor. Rejecting special effects, he narrates "Blooms of Darkness" in a taut, terse present-tense voice that refuses the consolations of retrospect. His decision to use the present tense is particularly shrewd since it eliminates - for the reader, as for Hugo - any possibility of a future. Like Hugo, we experience time as if it might stop at any moment. What he says of his grandparents' house in the Carpathians also applies to life in the Residence: "There a different clock ticks, with different hands." Like Anne Frank's diary - a work to which it will draw justified comparison - "Blooms of Darkness," beautifully translated from the Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green, records a brutal process of education. The only child of idealistic parents, Hugo has been raised in an atmosphere of well-mannered, even genteel, atheism. His upbringing leaves him ill-prepared to cope with Mariana's spectral rhythms. Ignorant of sex, he thinks of her as a magician: "At night she entertains the audience at the circus, and in the daytime she sleeps. The circus suits her. He immediately imagines her uttering bird calls, throwing balls up very high and, with marvelous balance, carrying three colored bottles on her head." Soon enough, however, the realities of life at the Residence bear down on both Hugo and Mariana. From within the cold closet in which she has locked him, Hugo hears Mariana being brutalized by her Nazi clients. Then morning comes, and she lets him into her bedroom ("the pink slipcovers, the fragrance of perfume, give it the look of a beauty parlor"), where she feeds him dainty sandwiches, bathes him, rubs him with lotion and eventually takes him into her bed. Mariana is an astonishing creation. At once caustic and self-pitying, pious and intemperate, she sets the novel on fire the moment she enters it. At first, Hugo can't adapt to her vacillating moods, the celerity with which she moves from lassitude to exuberance, her drunken rages and bouts of depression. Gradually, though, her very capriciousness wins him over. He gives up on his Jules Verne novels, his diary and his arithmetic problems - and in so doing also gives up on his mother's ethic of self-discipline, even in the face of a crisis. When Mariana abandons him in the closet, he longs for her. When she returns, he welcomes her embraces as she tries to assuage her guilt. Until its harrowing last third, "Blooms of Darkness" rarely leaves Mariana's bedroom. News of the outside world comes in snatches, and though Hugo assiduously cultivates his memories - of his parents and friends, of his Uncle Sigmund (whom Mariana almost married) - Mariana herself soon occludes his view of the past. For Hugo's parents, rationalism necessitated the abandonment of belief. In contrast, Mariana worships with the same impulsive fervor that allows her to blur the line between maternal and erotic indulgence. Mariana has hung a cross around Hugo's neck so that if he is discovered he can pretend to be her son. "You know very well that we don't observe our religion, but we never denied our Jewishness," his absent mother chides him, appearing in a dream. "The cross you're wearing, don't forget, is just camouflage." Yet for Mariana the cross is a "charm," and when, after bathing him, she puts it around his. neck, "the bath and the cross . . . seem to mingle into a secret ceremony." It is in his rendering of the border territory that Hugo and Mariana inhabit - "the thick darkness that was infused with perfume and brandy, and the pleasure that was mixed with a fear of the abyss" - that Appelfeld reveals his compassion, his wisdom and his restraint. To survive in such an atmosphere, Hugo has no choice but to invest his faith in Mariana. He relies on her to sustain him, just as she relies on him to satisfy some of her longings - "Delight, dear," she says, "that's what a woman needs, the rest is dessert" - and to regulate others. When she decides to cut down on her drinking, it is to Hugo that she hands her bottle of brandy: "You won't let me drink too much. I'll sip a little before my morning sleep - You'll be on watch and say to me, Mariana, now you're not allowed to drink. You're smart and know exactly when I'm allowed to drink and when it's forbidden. I'll lose track. You'll be my bookkeeper." Needless to say, Hugo's role soon shifts from bookkeeper to purveyor as his own appetite for the flavor of brandy - drunk from Mariana's mouth - intensifies. In its final pages, "Blooms of Darkness" takes a decisive and heartbreaking turn. With the Germans in retreat, the Residence shuts down. Mariana and Hugo flee. As the terms of the war shift, so do the terms of their interdependency; just as Mariana protected Hugo from the Nazis, Hugo must undertake to protect Mariana from the Russians. Their fates are now opposed: the same forces that will liberate Hugo will condemn Mariana as a collaborator, and his education in duplicity will be complete. Perhaps not surprisingly, "Blooms of Darkness" ends on a note of hesitant optimism. "We have a lot to give," a woman who knew Hugo's parents tells him. "We don't know yet how much we have." After receiving so much from Mariana, Hugo understands the frailty of hope, which must be tempered with wariness if it is to endure. Brutality is a hardier crop. As one of Mariana's colleagues at the Residence puts it: "Whores and Jews are always persecuted. There's nothing to be done." Like Anne Frank's diary, which it calls to mind, this novel records a brutal process of education. David Leavitt is the author, most recently, of a novel, "The Indian Clerk." He teaches at the University of Florida.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 21, 2010]
Review by Booklist Review
The latest from acclaimed Israeli novelist Appelfeld is a haunting tale of love, loss, and the resilience of the human spirit. When the Nazis begin to infiltrate the ghetto where 11-year-old Hugo lives, his mother has no choice but to leave him with her childhood friend Mariana, a prostitute in the local brothel. During the day Hugo is confined to Mariana's room, and at night he must stay silent, locked in her closet. As he listens to Mariana and the Nazi soldiers who visit, he clings to the fading memories of his family. Though Mariana is an alcoholic, prone to mood swings and abrupt disappearances, she is fiercely protective of Hugo and attentive to his needs. And as Hugo begins to come of age, he becomes more and more attached to Mariana, with an increasing desire to act as her caregiver and protector. When the prostitutes suddenly depart the brothel after the arrival of the Russian army, the two have no choice but to flee themselves, leading to a conclusion both grim and elegantly hopeful.--Strauss, Leah Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this powerful novel from award-winning Israeli writer Appelfeld, two discarded souls form an unlikely bond in the chaos of occupied Ukraine during WWII. When the Jews are being rounded up, 11-year-old Hugo's mother hides him with her childhood friend, Mariana, a prostitute in a brothel. Locked in a closet every night, Hugo hears Mariana at work and disappears into dreams and visions about his family and friends. Mariana takes loving if sporadic care of Hugo and slowly she becomes Hugo's whole world. Hugo returns Mariana's kindness by lifting her spirits as her moods swing from frivolity and disregard for the destruction around her to deep depression about the indignities she endures. Mariana is an exhilarating tragicomic heroine, a woman who is both alcoholic, manic-depressive, and believer in a God she long ago abandoned. The lean, spare prose does not shy away from harsh realities. A simple story that encapsulates the joy and sadness of a coming-of-age novel with the trauma of a world in the midst of destruction. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
As the Nazis move in to liquidate the ghetto where his family lives, 11-year-old Hugo and his mother flee. She leaves him with her childhood friend Marianna, now a prostitute, who has promised to hide the boy. During his days at the brothel, Hugo must stay mostly in a closet, where he listens to the conversations among the prostitutes or the sometimes harsh words of Marianna's customers as they rebuke her for not complying with their demands. When Marianna's self-pity is not fueled with alcohol, she treats Hugo affectionately, vowing to protect him at all costs. Slowly, Hugo forgets his family and friends and falls in love with Marianna; she cunningly abandons herself to him, introducing him to the pleasures of sex. When the Red Army begins its approach, the two flee the brothel, and through a heartbreaking series of events, Hugo finds himself bereft of love and truly alone in a world where the only hope for understanding and redemption is in a community cobbled from the remnants of his old life. Verdict This latest from Israeli novelist Appelfeld joins classics such as Elie Wiesel's Night in depicting the struggles of a young man to come to terms with the loneliness and despair of a world falling apart.-Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Evanston, IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An unadorned and heartbreaking tale of a young boy coming of age during World War II. Appelfeld (Laish, 2009, etc.) introduces us to Hugo Mansfeld, who is just about to turn 11 and who, without being aware of it, is more on the cusp of adulthood than of adolescence. Life in the ghetto has recently become unbearably tense and stressful. Hugo's father, a pharmacist, has been taken to a labor camp, and his mother is desperately looking for somewhere safe to place her son, perhaps in a local village near the Carpathian Mountains. After several plans fall through because some possible rescuers have been transported to camps by the German authorities, Hugo's mother places her son with Mariana, an old childhood friend who's "fallen low." Hugo quickly learns he is not allowed to go outside and must spend his nights in the closet of Mariana's sumptuous bedroom. A quiet child who at first likes to spend his time playing chess and reading, Hugo is also sensitive, reflective and almost comically polite. It turns out that Mariana is a prostitute, and the place where she lives, The Residence, is a brothel, but for a while Mariana succeeds in keeping Hugo's whereabouts a secret. Eventually, in her loneliness and alcoholic wooziness, she innocently takes Hugo to her bed for solace and companionship. He loves being comforted in Mariana's warm embrace, but as life in this Ukrainian village comes under increasing threat from retreating Germans and advancing Russians, they become lovers. After Hugo has been with Mariana for over a year, the Residence closes down altogether, and they travel the sparse countryside, trying to pass themselves off as mother and son. In time, however, Mariana is caught, and the Russians don't take kindly to women who have consorted with Germans. Throughout their harrowing ordeal Mariana tries to hold on to some semblance of faith in a God she feels she has abandonedor vice versa. Poignant and tender without being sentimental, the novel achieves its powerful emotive effects through simplicity and understatementa beautiful read. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
