I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to drown in the various lists of “best books of the year.” So I am grateful to NPR for doing a nice job of collecting its critics’ lists and posting all appropriate links in one place. Great resource if you’re still looking for gift suggestions, too. Thank you, NPR!
According to the Historical Novel Society, “To be deemed historical…a novel must have been written at least fifty years after the events described, or have been written by someone who was not alive at the time of those events (who therefore approaches them only by research).” Author Adam Braver may have been alive when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated: Braver was born in 1963. But he obviously does not remember the event, and he has approached it through a fascinating combination of research and fiction-crafting in his new novel, November 22, 1963 (Tin House Books).
I thought I knew a lot about the assassination, which is an historical event for me, too (my parents were still a few months away from meeting each other on November 22, 1963). But Braver’s book, which focuses in depth on the events of that day through the closely-drawn third-person eyes of everyone from a Dallas policeman to Abe Zapruder to Maud Shaw (Caroline and John-John’s nanny) to, of course, Jackie Kennedy, opened up so much more.
Most of us will never know what it was to be Air Force One as it bore the slain President’s coffin back to Washington; Braver has imagined that. Most of us didn’t witness the autopsy at Walter Reed; Braver has evoked it. Most of us can’t imagine how Maud Shaw told six-year-old Caroline what had happened (I hadn’t even realized that Jackie Kennedy had given the nanny that awful task); Braver shows us how it might have happened.
They were the only two in the room, but…Miss Shaw could barely look at Caroline, tucked firmly in bed under the canopy of rosebud chintz, forcing a confident expression, though it was clear she knew something wasn’t right; and Miss Shaw’s eyes were tearing while Caroline stared at her, almost demanding an explanation other than Miss Shaw taking her hand and apologizing for the tears; and Miss Shaw knew she could wait until morning (Mrs. Auchincloss told her Mrs. Kennedy said it was up to her to gauge what the children did or didn’t know), but she looked at Caroline and something told her it wouldn’t be fair to send the girl to sleep, to let her wake up full of promise—better for the girl to wake up as part of the grief, and that way maybe she’ll mourn more purely; then Miss Shaw inhaled so deeply her gut almost burst, and on the exhalation she said that there had been an accident; then she paused, realizing the sound of hope in the word accident, and corrected herself to say, ‘He’s been shot, and God has taken him to Heaven because they couldn’t make him better in the hospital,’ and then closed her eyes, praying that when she opened them she wouldn’t see Caroline crying—that this had all been a dream.
This is historical fiction at its best: intensely researched (check out Braver’s staggering list of acknowledgments, including the Oral History collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum [Maud Shaw’s is among the transcripts Braver tells us he accessed]) and beautifully written. I recommend it highly.
If you’ve seen the latest (November) issue of The Writer magazine, you may have caught my short “Take Note” item about a new exhibition at Manhattan’s Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Titled “Woman of Letters: Irène Némirovsky and Suite Française,” the exhibition runs into March 2009 and is accompanied by an impressive Web site.
I haven’t yet made it to the Museum to see the exhibition, but this week Edward Rothstein reviewed it for the New York Times. I think his review is essential reading for anyone interested in Némirovsky, Suite Française, and/or the exhibition itself. Rothstein does a particularly good job summarizing the ambiguities and dilemmas that too many reviews of the U.S. translation failed to acknowledge. (For my own take on the book, please click here.)
To its credit, the Museum is offering a number of complementary programs to help elucidate these points. One will take place this Sunday (October 26), and it features eminent historians Robert O. Paxton and Michael Marrus, who will offer context on “Jews in Vichy France.” (Aunt Erika has a competing and admittedly more cheerful commitment pre-celebrating Halloween with a certain box of French fries [five-year-old niece] and cheeseburger [two-year-old nephew] that will preclude attendance.) Another event is planned for December 8, when a panel of literary critics and scholars (including one with whom I had the pleasure of studying as a graduate student) will take on the dicey subject of “Irène Némirovsky and the Jewish Question.”
Whatever your plans, I wish you all a bon week-end!
Folks, I’ve been waiting quite awhile to be able to post this one.
Last spring, I read Margot Singer’s extraordinary short story collection, The Pale of Settlement, and I’ve been eager to share my full review with you, hopefully encouraging more readers to discover the book. Since I’d sold the piece to the Kenyon Review Online, however, I’ve had to wait for the editors over there to post it. That’s now been taken care of, so please go over to KRO and read the review now! Thank you!