The world that we knew : a novel / Alice Hoffman.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781501137570
- Physical Description: 372 pages : maps ; 25 cm
- Edition: First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
- Publisher: New York : Simon & Shuster, 2019.
- Copyright: ©2019.
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references. |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) > Fiction. Jews > German > Berlin > Fiction. Jews > France > Paris > Fiction. Jewish children > Fiction. Mothers and daughters > Fiction. Golem > Fiction. Survival > Fiction. Paris (France) > History > 1940-1944 > Fiction. |
Genre: | Historical fiction. |
Available copies
- 22 of 22 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Prince Rupert Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 22 total copies.
Other Formats and Editions
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Prince Rupert Library | Hoff (Text) | 33294002059574 | Adult Fiction - Second Floor | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2019 June #1
*Starred Review* For Jewish mother and daughter Hanni and Lea, 1940s Berlin is an increasingly terrifying place. Hanni's love for her daughter is boundless; Lea must be kept safe at any cost. Knowing she lacks the power to accomplish this, Hanni finds a partner in Ettie, a strong-willed rabbi's daughter. Together, using clay and kabbalistic magic, they create and animate a golem. This soulless, superhuman creature is given the mission of protecting Lea, loving her as her mother would, and seeing to her safety. In the novel's foreword, the perennially best-selling and imaginative Hoffman notes, "When you lose your child, the future vanishes. When you lose your parent, the world ends." During the Holocaust, a time of indescribable evil, so very many children vanished, so many parents were lost. WWII fiction has glutted the market, but Hoffman's unique brand of magical realism and the beautiful, tender yet devastating way she explores her subject make this a standout. Her settings, from Berlin to an isolated mountain village and a French convent, as well as every character are fully and vibrantly realized. Hoffman's use of a folkloric aspect adds a distinctive and captivating perspective to an exceptionally voiced tale of deepest love and loss.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With more than 30 works of fiction, Hoffman has a large, devoted following, and this, one of her finest, will be much requested. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews. - BookPage Reviews : BookPage Reviews 2019 October
The World That We KnewAlice Hoffman is a brilliant weaver of magic and the mundane, as many of her novels have proven over the years. In her hands, a story we think we know, from a time we think we've extracted every possible detail, can become a soulful new voyage into the heart of the human condition. With her latest novel, The World That We Knew, Hoffman travels to a hidden world built amid the horrors of the Holocaust and brings forth a spellbinding tale of love, loss and what it means to endure.Â
Hoffman's story begins in 1941 in Berlin, where a young Jewish mother, Hanni, knows that she must find a way to smuggle her daughter, Lea, out of the city before the Nazis take notice of her. To do this, she turns to a rabbi for mystical help, only to discover that his daughter, Ettie, is more willing to help Lea through magical means. Ettie, working from knowledge she's gained through observing her father, crafts a golem they call Ava to guide and protect Lea. Thus begins an unlikely and harrowing journey through France, where Ettie finds a new purpose, Lea finds her soul mate and Ava finds that she's much more than a single-minded creation.
In beautifully precise prose, Hoffman chronicles the experiences of these characters and those whose lives they touch along the way. Throughout the next three years of the war, each woman tries to survive while also pursuing her own process of self-discovery. Though Nazi-occupied France is an endlessly compelling place to many readers, Hoffman never takes her historical setting for granted. Rather than leaving us to lean on what we think we know, she weaves a fully realized vision of the hidden parts of history, chronicling the stories of people who slipped through the cracks on their way to freedom and the emotional toll that freedom took.Â
Page by page, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, The World That We Knew presents a breathtaking, deeply emotional odyssey through the shadows of a dimming world while never failing to convince us that there is light somewhere at the end of it all. This book feels destined to become a high point in an already stellar career.
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ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Alice Hoffman discusses the origins and history behind The World That We Knew.
Copyright 2019 BookPage Reviews. - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2019 July #2
In this tale of a young German Jewish girl under the protection of a golemâa magical creature of Jewish myth created from mud and waterâHoffman (The Rules of Magic, 2017, etc.) employs her signature lyricism to express the agony of the Holocaust with a depth seldom equaled in more seemingly realistic accounts. The golem, named Ava, comes into being in 1941 Berlin. Recently made a widow by the Gestapo and desperate to get her 12-year-old daughter, Lea, out of Germany, Hanni Kohn hires Ettie, a rabbi's adolescent daughter who has witnessed her father creating a golem, to make a female creature who must obey Hanni by protecting Lea at all costs. Ettie uses Hanni's payment to escape on the same train toward France as Lea and Ava, but the two human girls' lives take different paths. Ettie, who has always chafed at the limits placed on her gender, becomes a Resistance fighter set on avenging her younger sister's killing by Nazis. Lea, under Ava's supernatural care, escapes the worst ravages of the war, staying first with distant cousins in Paris (already under Gestapo rule), where she falls in love with her hosts' 14-year-old son, Julien; then in a convent school hiding Jewish girls in the Rhone Valley; then in a forest village not far from where Ettie has partnered in her Resistance act ivities with Julien's older brother. While Lea's experiences toughen and mature her, Ettie never stops mourning her sister but finds something like love with a gentle gentile doctor who has his own heartbreaking backstory. In fact, everyone in the large cast of supporting human charactersâas well as the talking heron that is Ava's love interest and Azriel, the Angel of Deathâbecomes vividly real, but Ava the golem is the heart of the book. Representing both fierce maternal love and the will to survive, she forces Lea and Ettie to examine their capacities to make ethical choices and to love despite impossible circumstances. A spellbinding portrait of what it means to be human in an inhuman world. Copyright Kirkus 2019 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2019 April
In 1941 Berlin, Hanni Kohn saves daughter Lea from the Nazis by taking her to a celebrated rabbi whose daughter, Ettie, creates a golem named Ava meant to protect Lea. As Ettie prepares to become a resistance fighter, Lea and Ava travel to Paris and thence to a convent blessed with silver roses and a village that ends up saving 3,000 Jews. With a 200,000-copy first printing and an eight-city tour.
Copyright 2019 Library Journal. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2019 July
Desperate to get her 12-year-old daughter, Lea, out of 1941 Berlin, Hanni Kohn trusts Ettie, the teen daughter of a rabbi, to create a golemâa clay figure brought to life by Ettie's magic. Unusually, Ava is shaped as a woman, and her raison d'être is to keep Lea safe. Ettie and her younger sister accompany Ava and Lea as they escape on a train to Paris. The three are separated by tragedy, and Ettie joins the French Resistance while Lea and Ava first seek shelter with distant relatives, who reluctantly take them in. The fates of the family's teen sons Victor and Julien are soon entwined with those of Lea and Ava as they all move about France. Out of the familiar framework of the extraordinary courage and cunning it took to survive the unspeakable brutality of the Holocaust comes this moving, suspenseful story of love, decency, and fearlessness in the face of evil.
Copyright 2019 Library Journal.VERDICT One of America's most brilliant novelists since her debut,Property Of (1977), Hoffman uses her signature element of magical realism to tackle an intolerably painful chapter in history. Readers know going in that their hearts will be broken, but they will be unable to let go until the last page. [See Prepub Alert, 2/24/19.]âBeth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 2019 July #5
Set in Nazi-occupied France between 1941 and 1944, Hoffman's latest (after
Copyright 2019 Publishers Weekly.The Rules of Magic ) is a bittersweet parable about the costs of survival and the behaviors that define humanity. The narrative follows several groups of characters: teenage Julien Lévi and his older brother, Victor, whose family is murdered by the Nazis; Ettie, a rabbi's daughter, who with Victor and Marianne, the Lévis' former (Protestant) housekeeper, become members of the Resistance; and Lea Kohn, a schoolgirl fleeing Berlin with her "cousin" Ava. Unbeknownst to most of the characters, Ava is actually a golemâa soulless supernatural protector out of Jewish folkloreâand her interactions with them and the ways in which she touches their lives serve as touchstones for Hoffman's reflections on the power of love to redeem and the challenges of achieving humanity, or retaining it, under such challenging circumstances. Though coincidence governs much of the meeting and team-ups of her characters, Hoffman mitigates any implausibility through the fairy tale quality of Ava's involvement and her supernatural powers of salvation. The attention to the harsh historical facts makes the reader care all the more strongly about the fates of all of the characters. Hoffman offers a sober appraisal of the Holocaust and the tragedies and triumphs of those who endured its atrocities. (Sept.)