The New York Review of Books - USA (2021-11-21)

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 13

MISDIRECTION CAN BEas useful a
trick in storytelling as it is in
magic. It may be tempting to
follow the trail of a character who
plunges into the thick of the ac-
tion, but sometimes it’s better to
stick with the one who’s been left
behind. That’s certainly the case
in Bernhard Schlink’s OLGA
(HarperVia, 288 pp., $27.99),which
traces the experiences of a quietly
determined German school-
teacher, a survivor of two world
wars and a lifetime of waiting for
a lover who may never return.
Schlink is best known for his
novel “The Reader,” and it’s possi-
ble to see Kate Winslet, who
starred in the film adaptation, as
the young Olga. Never quite
fitting in, never quite accepted in
society, she manages to get an
education and forge a career, but
her attachment to an aristocratic
adventurer is constantly sabo-
taged by his wanderlust. Her-
bert’s devotion to her exists both
“in the space between the
classes” and in the space between
his forays to the far corners of the
world — until an ill-fated expedi-
tion to Europe’s frozen north,
undertaken in the summer of
1913.
Olga’s fortunes in the aftermath
of his disappearance are relayed
in Charlotte Collins’s graceful
translation from the German,
which shifts midway through to
the first-person testimony of a
man the elderly Olga has known
since he was a sickly boy, enter-
tained by her tales of Herbert’s
exploits. When Olga dies under
mysterious circumstances, he’s
stunned to learn that she has
named him her heir. And with
that legacy comes a trove of
letters, never delivered to Her-
bert, that will reveal long-held
secrets as well as the depth of her
anger and pain. “I am,” she de-
clares, considering a Germany
whose lust for greatness seems as
destructive as Herbert’s, “the
widow of a generation.”

THE HAUNTED MANat the heart of
Jai Chakrabarti’s A PLAY FOR THE
END OF THE WORLD (Knopf, 304 pp.,
$27)is one of the few survivors of
a generation, a Polish immigrant

in New York who can’t forget the

makeshift family that was trans-

ported to Treblinka without him.

Jaryk and his older friend, Misha,

first met in a Jewish orphanage in

Warsaw and now they’re the only

two of its former residents able to

testify to the heroism of its direc-

tor, a historical figure named

Janusz Korczak, who spurned an

opportunity to save himself and

accompanied his young charges

to the gas chamber.

Chakrabarti writes that his title

refers to a play by the Bengali

poet Rabindranath Tagore, “about

a dying child living through his

imagination,” that Korczak staged

at the orphanage in 1942 — an

attempt to comfort his beloved

boys and girls, to “prepare them

for what was to come.”

Chakrabarti uses this historical

footnote to envision a whole new

fictional production, organized 30

years later by an Indian academic

trying to save an endangered

village whose inhabitants have

fled the violent birth of the new

nation of Bangladesh. Invited to

participate, Misha eagerly ac-

cepts. But Jaryk, who has finally

met a woman he might trust with

a glimpse of his past, lets him fly

to Calcutta alone.

Misha’s sudden death sends

Jaryk on a journey halfway across

the globe that will plunge him into

an increasingly complicated

political drama. But it’s the plight

of Lucy, the newly pregnant

American he leaves behind, that

gives Jaryk’s moral dilemma

added intimacy: Will honoring

past loyalties sabotage those of

the present and future? As the

novel moves between Lucy in

America and Jaryk in India, with

interludes that return to the War-

saw ghetto, we come to under-

stand Jaryk’s guilt-stricken “need

to burrow into oblivion” — and to

hope that another need will some-

how uproot it.

THE ANCIENT NARRATORof Angel

Khoury’s BETWEEN TIDES (Dzanc,

304 pp., $24.95)thinks she has

become resigned to the abandon-

ment that has loomed over much

of her adult life. Yet the arrival at

her beachside Cape Cod lair of a

very inquisitive young woman

gradually unleashes a torrent of

memories. Gilly is the daughter of

Blythe’s long-dead ex-husband,

born when he was almost 70.

She’s desperate to know more

about him — and about why he

created a whole new family with

her mother on North Carolina’s

Outer Banks, a ruthless attempt

at starting over.

At first reluctantly, then with an

unaccustomed fervor, Blythe

recalls the death of her fiancé in

the Civil War, which would lead to

a lengthy courtship with his

brother and their mutual devotion

to the windswept New England

coast, where he worked as a

hunting guide and as the keeper

of a lifeboat station. Despite her

efforts, he was as impossible to

confine as one of the wild birds he

studied so intently. As the 19th

century drew to a close and the

new century’s inevitable changes

loomed, his frustration evolved

into rebellion.

In an afterword, Khoury writes

of stories she first heard as a

child, rumors about a “man with

two families,” north and south,

barren and burgeoning, and her

research into what these families

might have known — or imagined

— about each other. From this,

she has constructed the character

of Gil Lodge, who so longed for a

son that he named his fourth

daughter after himself. Fittingly,

he remains as elusive on the page

as Gilly and Blythe are vividly

present. For them, he’s inevitably

defined by the natural world he

loved. “Gil was wed not to us,”

Blythe explains, “but to a place,

and to that place he was the most

faithful of men.” 0

Between Two Worlds

ALIDA BECKERis a former editor at
the Book Review.

HISTORICAL FICTION/BY ALIDA BECKER

SIMONE MARTIN-NEWBERRY

AVAIL ABLE

NOW

Fr om t he w r iter w ho s e “de f t

ju x t apo sitions c lo s e up t he g ap

be t w een humans and nonhumans ”

(R ichar d Pow er s) , a ne w c ollec tion

of Ne w Yor k T ime s e s s ay s f illed

with natural beaut y, human decency,

and per sis tent hope.

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