2023 book 93

 Anne Berest's The Postcard

The articles I’d read about this book made me think it was a memoir about a French Jewish woman investigating the stories of her family members who were murdered in Auschwitz, but it’s actually a work of autofiction. About a French Jewish woman investigating the stories of her family members who were murdered in Auschwitz. And part of me gets that, because she tells their stories, which must be at least partially imagined, very beautifully. But part of me found it distracting, wondering if the letters and e-mails that appear in the current timeline are “real.” (I was also very distracted by Passover being described as “the Jewish Easter,” which is wrong on a LOT of levels, but that’s not relevant really.) Anyway, things kick off when the author's mother receives a postcard listing the names of HER mother's immediately family (parents and siblings) who all died at Auschwitz, and so the author is determined to figure out who sent the postcard, and why, assisted by the research her mother has done over the years, all while interrogating her own non-observant Jewish identity. I found the historical portions, and the investigation, very moving, and I cried several times. Some of the author's thoughts on her identity were less interesting (though were relevant thematically), and I’m not sure why she included a scene of her grandfather being horny at an opium den. Anyway, I’m not grading a Holocaust book, I’m not sure this one is breaking new ground on Holocaust stories (it is very well told), but I think the examination of the survivors and their descendants and how they live (or don’t) with everything was very powerful.