Waiting for Eugene

What fiction writer, at this late date, could possibly have anything new to say about the Holocaust? What is inarguably the central tragedy of the 20th Century tends to sink these days beneath the weight of its own horrifying importance. It takes a wholly original imagination to again pull a living human story from the mudslide of sanctified history and make it fresh and chilling, and thank God Sallie Lowenstein has one. In a more melancholy voice than she has used in the past yet still with convincing childlike levity, Lowenstein wades right in as if the subject is as new to us as it is to her main character, Sarah, a twelve-year-old artist growing up in the less ironic America of four decades ago. Sarah is innocent, corny and goofy, but that naivete can be a virtue, not a setback, because she's able to view both her immigrant father Michel's worsening mental illness and the gradually emerging circumstances of his wartime experiences with an utterly fresh eye. She paints what she imagines. Through her art, Michel's strange and dreamlike stories begin to emerge illustrated on actual paper, providing both father and daughter new perspective on deep griefs and terrors which might help him sort himself out a little. Now if Sarah can only--literally--help him put some pieces back together . . . Subplots concerning a neighbor boy and a schoolroom bully work better at some moments than at others, but Lowenstein's confident narration of the central plot is done with the light touch of a true child who doesn't know that she's confronting "History". No, this is Sarah's own personal story, and all Sarah cares about are her parents and friends, and the way her hand can create worlds with a pencil, and saving her father. History can go hang. Long noted for her illustrated children's novels, Lowenstein's artwork again graces her words here. But it's her new willingness to let a little of the ugliness of the adult world shadow her characters that makes them leap off the page. Sarah, a girl you'll either want to parent or be, comes off so real that you even see the ink beneath her nails. EUGENE is the kind of book that lives in the mind long after the last page is reluctantly read.

Sara Goldman knows that she is different. Instead of worrying about boys, makeup, and fashion, she spends her time drawing. She already knows that she will be an artist, she just has to. However, she also is different because of her father. Her father, when well, is an architect. But when he is sick, he still believes that he is hiding from the soldiers during the war. He tells Sara great stories about the people who visited him while he stayed below the barn floor. Sara adores these stories even though she knows that her father is not well. He does not even recognize her when he is sick! Sara has trouble because she thrives on his stories. She draws the characters as her father describes them, fueling his sickness. She is torn between pleasing her mother and her own curiosity about the people her father knew. Waiting for Eugene is an easy to read novel. Readers will understand Sara's pain as she fights her mother to hear another story, even though she becomes scared of her crazy father. She loves him when he is well and the family thrives. However, just like that, her father can disappear into his fantasy world. Readers will adore this book as much as I did.

I first wanted to read this book because the girl described on the inside flap sounded like me- artistic and out-of-place with "normal" teens. Once I started reading, though, I kept reading simply because the book was well written and had an intriguing plot. The development of the characters, especially one of the central characters, who does not actually appear in the present-day setting of the novel, is surprising, and very interesting to read. Aside from Sender Unknown, Waiting for Eugene is my favorite of Sallie's books. I highly reccommend it for anyone who has ever felt outside of the "norm," and for anyone who enjoys a good story.

Waiting for Eugene, by Sallie Lowenstein (Lion Stone Books, $19; ages 12 and up) "Eugene" is just one of the mysterious presences haunting this quiet but intense novel by a local author. Twelve-year-old Sara Goldman's father, Michel, is a survivor of a wartime trauma; what war is never specified, but the flashbacks suggest Nazi-occipied France. As a little boy, Michel was hidden for many months in a hole under a barn floor. Years later, he has become a successful architect in America, but he can't stop the memories. Worse, he can't tell which of the characters populating the stories he tells Sara--Eugene, Rudi, Lili and the rest--are real and which are not. For Sara, who has always loved his tales, the realization that her father is profoundly damaged is a shock and a challenge. An uneven work in some ways,-- Sara's conversations with Willie are particularly unconvincing--Waiting for Eugene nevertheless stays with you longer than most.