Book: The clothes on their backs
Jul. 1st, 2010 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor: Linda Grant
Details: (c) Linda Grant 2008; Pub Virago 2008; ISBN 978-1-84408-541-5
Verdict: The clothes on their backs is a vividly original take on the story of Holocaust survivors adapting to life in the UK.
Reasons for reading it: My parents read it for their Jewish book club and recommended it to me.
How it came into my hands: I borrowed it from my parents. Actually ages ago, but didn't get round to reading it because I kept bumping up library books to the top of the queue. And then I started it while travelling, got halfway through and was so distracted by the travelling that I forgot I hadn't finished it, and read some other books in between.
Admittedly The clothes on their backs is slow to get started, which is partly why I didn't pick it up again after putting it down. It looks as if it's going to be yet another book about the daughter of immigrant parents trying to create an identity for herself as she reaches adulthood and come to terms with her parents' past. Not a bad example of the genre, but I've read rather a lot of them and this one didn't particularly grab me. It's only after Vivien starts working for her uncle Sándor that the novel diverges from conventional paths. The second half is not quite gripping, as it's still mostly a character piece, but really held my attention.
The thing about Sándor as a character is that he's portrayed in a very unsympathetic manner. It becomes more and more clear that her survived the Holocaust by being a ruthless bastard, and he doesn't really become any more pleasant once he reaches the safety of England. He's vulgar, ignorant and prejudiced, he makes money as a pimp and as a criminally nasty landlord. He's a womanizer with a predeliction for Black women that looks a lot like a creepy fetish. tCotB is very clever in presenting him through the eyes of his idealistic, right-on 70s activist niece, who despises him for all the reasons that any right-on person would, but at the same time sees him as family and starts to gain some understanding of what he went through, and even sees herself in him in some ways. Nobody ever spells out the moral message that Holocaust affected unpleasant people as well as admirable ones (and was still just as evil when its victims were unlikeable) but it is gradually established by the whole context. There's nothing as crude as trying to imply that Sándor was justified in treating people as badly as he did because of what he suffered, but you can certainly start to feel a degree of empathy for his view that following the social contract just gets you enslaved, tortured and probably murdered by the Nazis.
The note at the back of the book says that Sándor was based on a real person, one Peter Rachman who became a slum landlord in Notting Hill after surviving unimaginable atrocities in Poland and Siberia. Which makes it a particularly interesting handling of the some really huge questions about morality nad politics.
As well as this major storyline, you get a bit of the more typical second-generation narrative, with Vivien's parents trying to keep as quiet an unobjectionable as possible, hiding their Jewish heritage from their daughter, and leaving her feeling rootless as she struggles to understand why she doesn't really fit into English society. She goes through various phases of rebellion, from sleeping around, to wearing outrageous clothes, to marrying the most typically English guy she can find, to joining the punk and anti-fascist scene. All this is portrayed very well, and if you're only going to read one such story about how the effects of the Holocaust persist into future generations, this isn't a bad one to pick. (There's only a small amount of description of the horrors actually involved, because Vivien's parents Don't Talk About It, and there's only a couple of pages of Sándor's account of the brutality he suffered.) But it's her not quite successful attempt to befriend her outcast uncle that makes the book really original.
There is also the character of Sándor's fiancée Eunice, who allows the book to discuss racism against Afro-Caribbeans, though I felt that this aspect wasn't really very successful. There's too much amazement about someone with dark skin having a Welsh accent!!! and being middle class!!! for one thing, and for another it's just too much to cram in to a book that already has a lot of complex stuff going on.
Details: (c) Linda Grant 2008; Pub Virago 2008; ISBN 978-1-84408-541-5
Verdict: The clothes on their backs is a vividly original take on the story of Holocaust survivors adapting to life in the UK.
Reasons for reading it: My parents read it for their Jewish book club and recommended it to me.
How it came into my hands: I borrowed it from my parents. Actually ages ago, but didn't get round to reading it because I kept bumping up library books to the top of the queue. And then I started it while travelling, got halfway through and was so distracted by the travelling that I forgot I hadn't finished it, and read some other books in between.
Admittedly The clothes on their backs is slow to get started, which is partly why I didn't pick it up again after putting it down. It looks as if it's going to be yet another book about the daughter of immigrant parents trying to create an identity for herself as she reaches adulthood and come to terms with her parents' past. Not a bad example of the genre, but I've read rather a lot of them and this one didn't particularly grab me. It's only after Vivien starts working for her uncle Sándor that the novel diverges from conventional paths. The second half is not quite gripping, as it's still mostly a character piece, but really held my attention.
The thing about Sándor as a character is that he's portrayed in a very unsympathetic manner. It becomes more and more clear that her survived the Holocaust by being a ruthless bastard, and he doesn't really become any more pleasant once he reaches the safety of England. He's vulgar, ignorant and prejudiced, he makes money as a pimp and as a criminally nasty landlord. He's a womanizer with a predeliction for Black women that looks a lot like a creepy fetish. tCotB is very clever in presenting him through the eyes of his idealistic, right-on 70s activist niece, who despises him for all the reasons that any right-on person would, but at the same time sees him as family and starts to gain some understanding of what he went through, and even sees herself in him in some ways. Nobody ever spells out the moral message that Holocaust affected unpleasant people as well as admirable ones (and was still just as evil when its victims were unlikeable) but it is gradually established by the whole context. There's nothing as crude as trying to imply that Sándor was justified in treating people as badly as he did because of what he suffered, but you can certainly start to feel a degree of empathy for his view that following the social contract just gets you enslaved, tortured and probably murdered by the Nazis.
The note at the back of the book says that Sándor was based on a real person, one Peter Rachman who became a slum landlord in Notting Hill after surviving unimaginable atrocities in Poland and Siberia. Which makes it a particularly interesting handling of the some really huge questions about morality nad politics.
As well as this major storyline, you get a bit of the more typical second-generation narrative, with Vivien's parents trying to keep as quiet an unobjectionable as possible, hiding their Jewish heritage from their daughter, and leaving her feeling rootless as she struggles to understand why she doesn't really fit into English society. She goes through various phases of rebellion, from sleeping around, to wearing outrageous clothes, to marrying the most typically English guy she can find, to joining the punk and anti-fascist scene. All this is portrayed very well, and if you're only going to read one such story about how the effects of the Holocaust persist into future generations, this isn't a bad one to pick. (There's only a small amount of description of the horrors actually involved, because Vivien's parents Don't Talk About It, and there's only a couple of pages of Sándor's account of the brutality he suffered.) But it's her not quite successful attempt to befriend her outcast uncle that makes the book really original.
There is also the character of Sándor's fiancée Eunice, who allows the book to discuss racism against Afro-Caribbeans, though I felt that this aspect wasn't really very successful. There's too much amazement about someone with dark skin having a Welsh accent!!! and being middle class!!! for one thing, and for another it's just too much to cram in to a book that already has a lot of complex stuff going on.
