For the JC April 2024 “He looked me over, assessed my wristwatch, considered my shoes and the likely cost of my hairdo, and tried to decide if I came from a family worth talking to; such is Italy”. In one crisp sentence, Derek B Miller sets the reader off on a magical mystery tour, revolving […]
For the JC February 2024 Out of interest, I Googled how long it might take to walk the 90 plus kilometres from the Polish town of Mezritsh to the once important Jewish centre of Lublin. Twenty or so hours, was the answer. For Manya Wilkinson’s hapless trio of young boys trying to make the same […]
For the Jewish Chronicle September 29 2023 Lavie Tidhar’s Maror was one of the sensational novels of 2022, a violent rollercoaster and drug-fuelled ride into Israel’s history, with a particular focus on the Lebanon war of 1983. Now, in Adama, Tidhar reaches even further back, first to the death camps of Europe and then to […]
For the JC Feb 16 2023 Joseph O’Connor’s new novel, My Father’s House, is two things: a compelling, twisty thriller, whose outcome is hard to guess; and an exquisitely rendered piece of literature, from a masterful writer. The novel is based on the extraordinary true story of a Catholic priest, Hugh O’Flaherty, in 1943 Rome, […]
My Father’s House review for JC by Jenni Frazer Feb 16 2023 Joseph O’Connor’s new novel, My Father’s House, is two things: a compelling, twisty thriller, whose outcome is hard to guess; and an exquisitely rendered piece of literature, from a masterful writer. The novel is based on the extraordinary true story of a Catholic […]
For the JC books pages January 30 2023 Most of us, I suppose, are used to biographies which take a chronological view of the subject’s life, perhaps beginning with the central thing which brought them to fame. Norman Lebrecht, however, in this glorious study of Beethoven, has taken a different approach. Almost unrivalled in the […]
For the JC Sep 2022 More than 40 years ago George Clare published his Holocaust memoir, Last Waltz in Vienna, one of the very first of what might be called Shoah-realism. In its wake came a veritable deluge of Holocaust-related non-fiction and fiction, sometimes hard to tell the two apart. Clare’s book suffered, in my […]
For the JC August 2022 Maror by Lavie Tidhar Head of Zeus £20 Every few years an Israeli writer produces a blockbuster book, designed to set readers by the ears and occasionally readjust what they know — or think they know — about the Jewish state. Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness, tracing […]
For the JC The Prison Minyan by Jonathan Stone Lightning Books £8.99 (pub date January 13 2022) Rare is the book which is so delicious that you want immediately to read it all over again, but Jonathan Stone’s glorious The Prison Minyan is just that. Just the title makes you want to dive into the […]
Leonard Cohen review for JC Sept 2021 It ought to be admitted that even for the hard-core Leonard Cohen fan — among whose ranks I count myself — yet another book on an aspect of his life makes the heart sink a little. So I approached Harry Freedman’s “Leonard Cohen, The Mystical Roots of Genius”, […]