The Year Is '42

As if written by a beautiful butterfly enticing the reader by sensing the tale through a veil of history, humanity and inference. Three lives until the end when the force of generations becomes clear and affecting.

This novel is beautifully done. I immediately read it twice through. It's short and slightly elliptical. The first main character is a loyal German Army officer who fought in WW I and comes to hate and fear the Nazis. The second main character is a Ukranian pediatrician who was born in the old regime and lives through the 1917 revolution, its forward looking first fifteen years and then the repressions and horrors of the Stalin years. None of the above, however, really tells you what the novel is about because it's about the interior as well as the exterior life of the main characters.

Nella Bielski's new novel will be noted for its ingenious plotting, concision of style, and use of historical scenes. But just as a life isn't a only series of discrete events but also a not completely comprehended network of perceptions, notions and emotions, this novel adds up to much more than its wonderfully handled novelistic elements. In this story, the historical and political forces of Europe, mainly during World War II, play upon the characters, moving them about; the characters push back with what is in their nature. It is their natures that are inevitable, not their fates. The same holds true for the voice telling this story. It withholds from us the too easy gratifications of character analysis and categorization; it offers the more rich pleasures of the feeling of experience, with its limitations and exertions. I approached this novel mainly because John Berger co-translated it -- and if you're familiar with his remarkable essays and novels, you'll also enjoy sensing his hand at work here.

This compact immersion into the souls of three principal characters struggling in the most hellish time of a still living generation leaves you bewildered that its author is simply too young to have lived these moments. You feel the sweat under the covers of a feverish student while her grandparents debate who can enter her room, you see the look of a bartender that lingers too long on a pair of his customers, you worry at a school boy's simple remark. It is the intensity of this environment that makes every moment a mystery. It is the deftness of the narrative voice which modulates with every character it describes that makes your heart pound when a door closes, not in the quiet of your home, but only in the narration. It is so remarkable a book, that I am going to dust off the French dictionary which hides somewhere in our home, and tackle the work in the language in which it was written. Merci bien Madam. Grace a vous, nous vivons un grand moment! Alan Grosbard