Books Set in North America: United States: New York City

Button Man, by Andrew Gross (2018)

Button Man is a historical family drama about organized crime and the garment industry in the 1920s and 30s.  The novel opens in 1905 with the death of one of the young twin brothers from the Rabishevsky family.  His death left a pall over the family and haunts Harry, his twin brother, for the rest of his life.

The Rabishevsky’s were Russian-Jews scraping by in their new environs.  After the death of their father, a few years later, the children are forced to find work.  The novel focuses on Morris, the youngest child.  He finds work at 12 years old as an apprentice as a cutter in the garment factory.  He is ambitious and soon learns the industry.

Jump forward to the 1920s, Morris has begun his own small garment company.  He enlists his older brother, Sol, to be the company’s account.  They call their company Raab Brothers.  They try to get Harry into the business, but he is drawn to the seedier side of the city and has fallen in with some small-time criminals.

At first the Raab Brothers is too small to attract the interest of organized crime, which by the 1930s has infiltrated the garment industry by controlling its unions.  Morris fought the unions, knowing that he was able to pay his employees higher wages, and didn’t want to pay the “protection” to the criminal syndicate.

The novel also focuses on some real-life criminals ~ Louis Buchalter, Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro, Mendy Weiss, Dutch Schultz, Albert Anastasia and others.  While reading this book, I periodically stopped to do some fact checking.  Much of what was depicted in the novel was based on actual events.

I enjoyed this book.  It was a fast read.  The final confrontation between Morris and the criminal element in the last few pages, however, was a bit too far-fetched, in what otherwise was a very believable novel. 

The novel was based on his only family saga.  His grandfather was in the garment industry and had first-hand experience in dealing with the so-called union organizers.  This made the book especially poignant.

A Button Man is a hired killer.  The title, thus, is a double entendre:  It can refer to both a hired killer or the garment industry itself.

Read:  January 14, 2020

4.5 Stars

Books Set in North America: United States: New Orleans, Louisiana

The Yellow House, by Sarah M. Broom (2019)

The Yellow House is a memoir of New Orleans as seen through eyes of a large, loving family that grew up in New Orleans East.  In 1961, Ivory Webb, a 19-year-old widow with two young children, purchased a house for just over $3,000, on Wilson Avenue in New Orleans East.  She would live in that tiny house for the next 44 years.  Over that period, she would remarry a man named Simon Broom and the family would grow to 12 children.

Sarah Broom, the author, is the youngest child, born in the final days of 1979.  Almost exactly six months later, her father died suddenly, leaving Ivory to raise her family on her own.

While he was alive, Simon would continually attempt to make renovations and repairs on the house.  After his death, the house became another “child” to tend to.  At some point in time, yellow siding was put up on the house, hence the Yellow House that Sarah grew up on.

The first part of the book delves into the history of the development of New Orleans East and its transformation to the neighborhood it became.  By the time the author was born, the neighborhood had changed and was the forgotten district of New Orleans, surrounded by Lake Ponchartrain and the Industrial Canal.

Sarah grew in a loving home environment.  Her mother was determined to see that her children were raised to achieve.  When Sarah began hanging out with the wrong crowd in junior high school, her mother sent her to a religious private school.  Some of her brothers also attended private schools.  Money that could have been used to make repairs in the house went towards education. 

Sarah went to college in Texas.  Two of her brothers drive her to her new environment, where she is suddenly exposed to a bigger world than her comfortable New Orleans.  She eventually lands a job in New York working for O Magazine.  She was living there on that fateful day when Hurricane Katrina struck.  Most of her family, however, was still living in New Orleans East, although they had been evacuated before the levees broke.  The large family became scattered all over the United States.

New Orleans East was one of the first areas of the city to be inundated by water from Katrina.  The Yellow House was severely damaged as water literally covered the house.  The house, however, did not collapse, nor was it displaced to another location, as so many other houses in New Orleans East and the 9th Ward were.

The Federal Government established a Road Home Program, designed to assist Louisiana residents who had been affected by Katrina (and Hurricane Rita, which occurred a month after Katrina).  The Program was to assist homeowners with funds to rebuild their homes.  The Program, however, was fraught with problems.  In addition, city officials, hoping to rid the City of blight, determined that it would demolish homes unless the owners indicated otherwise.  Notices of the demolitions were mailed to the address of the homes that were to be razed.  Thus, 2 years passed and the Broom family was still living outside of New Orleans when the Notice of Demolition was mailed to the Yellow House.  The family was unaware of the notice, and the house ~ the bloodline of Ivory ~ was torn down.  There was little recourse to the family.

After traveling the globe in search of jobs to avoid the trauma of Katrina, the author eventually returns to New Orleans, this time living in the French Quarter, to try to find closure.

I am not generally a fan of memoirs, however, I found this to be fascinating.  I lived (and still live) in South Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina.  I was intimately familiar with the rebuilding of public spaces in the City.  Thus, I was intrigued by the author’s perspective.  She has a beautiful way of describing her surroundings.  I could almost see and feel the city through the pages.

A few photographs were included in the book.  I would liked to have seen more.  Also, a map of the City would be helpful for readers unfamiliar with New Orleans.

Read:  January 6, 2010

5 Stars

Books Set in Europe: England

The Silent Patient, by Alex Michaelides (2019)

The Silent Patient is a psychological thriller narrated by Theo Faber, a psychotherapist.  He is ostensibly out to help Alicia Berenson, a young woman accused of murdering her husband and who is now confined to a psychiatric facility known as the Grove.

Alicia was a famous painter with an equally famous fashion photographer husband, Gabriel.  The novel starts after Alicia had been convicted of binding her husband to a chair and shooting him in the face several times.  After the murder, Alicia refused to speak again.

The murder made headlines.  Theo Faber seemingly became obsessed with the murder and, several years after the crime, he got the opportunity to work with Alicia.  He was determined to get her to talk and get to motive behind the killing.  In the process of providing her with his version of therapy, he meets with Alicia’s family and friends and quizzes them about Alicia’s past.

As the novel unwraps, we learn as much about Alicia’s past as we do about Theo’s past.  Theo is trapped in a marriage with a woman he seemingly loves despite her affair.  There was a final twist that I didn't see coming, which really made for a good thriller.

This novel was a page-turner.  It was a very quick read and was just the ticket to get me out of my reading slump.

Read: January 3, 2020

5 Stars

Books Set in Europe and Asia: Turkey

The Towers of Trebizond, by Rose Macaulay (1956)

The Towers of Trebizond, by Rose Macaulay is a very amusing book that is partly autobiographical.  It follows the adventures of Laurie, the narrator; her eccentric Aunt Dot; an Anglican Priest; and a camel.  They trek from Istanbul to Trebizond, partly by vehicle, partly by foot and camel.  Aunt Dot’s primary focus seems to be converting the women she meets along the way to Anglicanism, believing this will liberate the women from the confines of Islam.

Along the way, they meet all sorts of interesting characters, including Seventh Day Adventists, Billy Graham on tour, Turkish policemen and British travel writers.  In their travels, they come perilously close to the Russian border.  The priest is hesitant to cross into Russia on the grounds that it would be perceived as condoning a country that persecutes Christians.  Aunt Dot convinces him otherwise, noting that even in Britain there are elements of the government that one need not agree with.

While Aunt Dot and the priest explore Russia, Laurie remains in Turkey with the camel.  While on her own, Laurie begins her search into her Anglican faith.  She is left alone with her thoughts of faith and the conflict about her love affair with a married man.

Having traveled through Turkey, albeit not a camel, I found the author’s descriptions of places fascinating.  Despite there being 50 years between when this book took place and my visit to the country, I still recognized facets of Turkish life.

Read: December 2019

4 Stars

Books Set in Europe: Poland

The Tattooist of Auschwitz, by Heather Morris (2018)

The Tattooist of Auschwitz is based on the experiences of Lale Sokolov and Gita Furman who were deported to Auschwitz in the early 1940s, and remained there until the end of World War II.

Lale was a young Slovakian Jew who was rounded up, ostensibly for construction work, in 1942.  He soon found himself a prisoner at Auschwitz.  At the time he was taken, he was not aware of the full extent of Nazi actions.  Because he spoke several languages, he became the assistant to a French Jew named Pepan, the tattooist.  Pepan took Lale under his wing and taught him the art of tattooing.  Although he despised the work, he learned to keep his head down and tattooed the numbers on the arms of Jews entering the camp.  One day his tattooist mentor disappeared, he Lale became the primary tattooist.  This position gave him privileges not afforded other prisoners.

One day, he tattooed the arm of a young women.  Although she had already been shorn of her hair, he thought she was beautiful.  He learned her name was Gita and she was a prisoner at Birkenau.  She, too, was given a “job” at Auschwitz, which provided her with some protections.  The two young people were able to arrange meetings and they fell in love.

Because of Lale’s position and privileges, he was able to smuggle extra rations of food and clothing to some of the other prisoners.  Lale did what he had to do to survive and to try to keep some of his fellow prisoners alive.

When the War ended, Lale and Gita were separated, however, they continued to search for each other, as well as their family members.  Ultimately, they found each other and after the War, they married.  They ended up living in Australia.  He kept his work as at tattooist secret for many years for fear that he would be considered a Nazi collaborator since his work in the Auschwitz kept him alive.

After Gita died, Lale met with the author and told his story.  It is a fascinating tale of love and survival amid unthinkable horror.

Read:  November 19, 2019

4 Stars

Books Set in North America: United States: New York

The Grammarians, by Cathleen Schine (2019)

The Grammarians is a novel about a set of identical twins, Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, who were obsessed with words and the English language.  Their favorite book as a child is an old dictionary, which they pore over intently.

As children, they are inseparable, but as they grow up, the language that was the glue that kept them together, becomes the cause of their separation.

I didn’t care for the characters and their mundane lives.

This book was recommended by one of my book groups that focuses on Jewish-themed books.  This was billed as describing growing up in a middle-class Jewish family from the 1950s to present.  There was virtually no Jewish content to this novel.

Read:  November 8, 2019

2 Stars

Books Set in Europe: France, Austria, and England

The Hare with Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal (2010)

The Hare with Amber Eyes is a memoir of the author’s paternal ancestors, who were once of the wealthy European Jewish Ephrussi’s of the banking dynasty.  The memoir starts with a telling of the author’s great-uncle Charles Ephrussi, an art collector in Paris.  In the 1870’s, Charles acquired over 260 Japanese netsuke, the small wood and ivory carvings of plants and animals.  One of the netsuke was a hare with amber eyes, hence the title of the book.

Charles gave the netsuke to his Viennese cousin, Viktor Ephrussi, as a wedding present.  Viktor was the author’s great-grandfather, which is how the items came into the possession of the author’s family.

Because the Ephrussi’s were Jewish, albeit secular, during the Nazi regime and World War II, they lost everything, including the extensive art collection.  Amazingly, the netsuke survived and remained in the family.  (We learn the story of their survival in the book.)  The author inherited the netsuke collection, which led him to explore his family’s history.

His grandmother, Elizabeth Ephurssi, converted to Anglican Church when she married the Dutch Hendrik de Waal.  The author father, Elizabeth’s son, became an Anglican priest, thus the memoir is in part a search into the author’s Jewish past.  I found it a rather uncomfortable search.

I read this book because it was a selection of one of my book discussion groups.

Read:  November 4, 2018

2 Stars