The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman

The Marriage of Opposites
by Alice Hoffman
narrated by
Gloria Reuben
Tina Benko
Santino Fontana

Published: 2015
Publisher: Simon Schuster
Genre: Historical, Romance, Art, Jewish, France
Hardback: 371
Rating: 4
Goodreads
Website

First sentence(s):
I always left my window open at night, despite the warnings I'd been given.

Growing up on idyllic St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel's mother, a pillar of their small refugee community of Jews who escaped the Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for being a difficult girl who refuses to live by the rules. Growing up, Rachel's salvation is their maid Adelle's belief in her strengths, and her deep, life-long friendship with Jestine, Adelle's daughter. But Rachel's life is not her own. She is married off to a widower with three children to save her father's business. When her husband dies suddenly and his handsome, much younger nephew, Fréderick, arrives from France to settle the estate, Rachel seizes her own life story, beginning a defiant, passionate love affair that sparks a scandal that affects all of her family, including her favorite son, who will become one of the greatest artists of France.

My two-bits:
Oh, the frustrations of struggles with family and love in a culture trying to maintain its traditions.

~*~
* listened to audio version

* part of monthly theme: SciFi, Supper, Love, Sex and Marriage

* part of ibc book club (here)

The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted by Robert Hillman

The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted
by Robert Hillman

Published: 2019
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Genre: Historical, Jewish, Australia
Hardback: 304 pages
Rating: 5
Goodreads
Website

First sentence(s):
She didn't stay long as far as marriages go, jut a year and then months.

Zombie sighting:
"… She has been six weeks at my apartment. Not a word. A zombie."
-chapter 35, page 280

Can one unlikely bookshop heal two broken souls?

It is 1968 in rural Australia and lonely Tom Hope can't make heads or tails of Hannah Babel. Newly arrived from Hungary, Hannah is unlike anyone he's ever met--she's passionate, brilliant, and fiercely determined to open sleepy Hometown's first bookshop.

Despite the fact that Tom has only read only one book in his life, when Hannah hires him to install shelving for the shop, the two discover an astonishing spark. Recently abandoned by an unfaithful wife--and still missing her sweet son, Peter--Tom dares to believe that he might make Hannah happy. But Hannah is a haunted woman. Twenty-four years earlier, she had been marched to the gates of Auschwitz.

My two-bits:

Loved the portrayal of books and the bookshop in this story.

Loved the Tom character and his gentle and loving ways.

Loved the description of how to make trifle.

~*~
* weekly theme: Australia - country

Someday We Will Fly by Rachel DeWoskin

Someday We Will Fly
by Rachel DeWoskin

Find out more about this book and author:
Goodreads
BookExcerpt
Website
Facebook
Twitter

Published: January 2019
Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
Genre: Historical, WWII, YA, Jewish, Shanghai
Hardback: 320
Rating: 5

First sentence(s):
In the last act I saw my parents perform, they already looked like ghosts of the Stanislav Circus.

Warsaw, Poland. The year is 1940 and Lillia is 15 when her mother, Alenka, disappears and her father flees with Lillia and her younger sister, Naomi, to Shanghai, one of the few places that will accept Jews without visas. There they struggle to make a life; they have no money, there is little work, no decent place to live, a culture that doesn't understand them. And always the worry about Alenka. How will she find them? Is she still alive?

Meanwhile Lillia is growing up, trying to care for Naomi, whose development is frighteningly slow, in part from malnourishment. Lillia finds an outlet for her artistic talent by making puppets, remembering the happy days in Warsaw when they were circus performers. She attends school sporadically, makes friends with Wei, a Chinese boy, and finds work as a performer at a "gentlemen's club" without her father's knowledge.

But meanwhile the conflict grows more intense as the Americans declare war and the Japanese force the Americans in Shanghai into camps. More bombing, more death. Can they survive, caught in the crossfire?

My two-bits:

This refugee/immigrant Polish Jewish experience in Shanghai during WWII was a fresh and interesting perspective for me to read about.

I loved how the protagonist artistic talent pulls her through the story which also bring about a couple tissue box moments.

~*~
* review copy courtesy of publisher

The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard

The Book of Aron
by Jim Shepard

Find out more about this book and author:
Powells
Goodreads
Website
Twitter @jimshepardfan

Published: 2015
Publisher: Knopf
Genre: Historical, WW2
Hardback: 272 pages
Rating: 3.5

First sentence(s):
My mother and father named me Aron, but my father said they should have named me What Have You Done, and my uncle told everyone they should have called me What Were You Thinking.

Aron, the narrator, is an engaging if peculiar and unhappy young boy whose family is driven by the German onslaught from the Polish countryside into Warsaw and slowly battered by deprivation, disease, and persecution. He and a handful of boys and girls risk their lives by scuttling around the ghetto to smuggle and trade contraband through the quarantine walls in hopes of keeping their fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters alive, hunted all the while by blackmailers and by Jewish, Polish, and German police, not to mention the Gestapo.

When his family is finally stripped away from him, Aron is rescued by Janusz Korczak, a doctor renowned throughout prewar Europe as an advocate of children’s rights who, once the Nazis swept in, was put in charge of the Warsaw orphanage. Treblinka awaits them all, but does Aron manage to escape — as his mentor suspected he could — to spread word about the atrocities?

Jim Shepard has masterfully made this child's-eye view of the darkest history mesmerizing, sometimes comic despite all odds, truly heartbreaking, and even inspiring. Anyone who hears Aron's voice will remember it forever.

My two-bits:

I found this to be a look at a Jewish ghetto during WWII from a teen boy's perspective. The main character, Aron, interacts with a variety of people to present life at this time period. Although, by the end of the story I felt the focus on Janusz Korczak and became more curious and interested in him than Aron.

~*~

Tournament of Books short list nominee (details)