Night Train to Mother - Softcover

Ronit Lentin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0946211728 ISBN 13: 9780946211722

Publisher: Attic Press, 1989

Synopsis

In 1984 Ruth takes a night train from Bucharest to Vatra Dornei, her mother's birthplace, in north Romania, trying to trace the there she had always heard her mother's family talk about during her Israeli childhood. Night Train To Mother is the story of Ruth's journey and that of the three women in her mother's family with whom she identifies most closely her great grandmother Dora, grandmother Rosa and great aunt Hetti. This is a compelling and deeply moving novel, exploring the responses of individual women, across four generations, to the life-shaping forces of history, ethnicity and culture. Night Train To Mother weaves together history, autobiography and fiction, based on Ronit Lentin's careful and passionate research into the lives of women of her own family, which she conducted over many years in Israel and on her own root-searching journey to Romania.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Appropriating the tragic history of pre-Holocaust Eastern European Jewry, this generational saga is a U.S. debut for Lentin, an Israeli native residing in Ireland. Through the travails of the Laxes, the author spotlights the singular lifestyles of well-to-do Orthodox Romanian Jewish families of the era, which were often headed by strong-willed, bread-winning matriarchs. Wed to a scholar at the turn of the century, Dora Lax becomes a successful businesswomen but is sexually unfulfilled; her street-smart daughter Rosa likewise finds that her lovemaking is devoid of an erotic "flutter." The political events of the two world wars and rampant anti-Semitism will displace and impoverish the Laxes and their children; Rosa and her husband immigrate to Palestine in 1940 and become members of a lost generation, forever guilt-ridden that they avoided Hitler's slaughter while friends and family suffered or perished. Lentin treads familiar fictional ground as the bland Lax clan reveals itself through personal and political attachments. The novel displays verve and freshness only when Lentin moves to 1975 to describe the lonely, spartan existence of Rosa's younger sister, Hetti, a disaffected Communist and reluctant Israeli.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

A patriarchal Jewish tradition is challenged by the archetypal faces of the goddess--virgin, matron, and old woman--disclosed in this fictionalized memoir of journeying. The setting is primarily pre-World War II Romania, the theme one of moving--both away from and toward. Returning to her mother's birthplace in Romania to try to discover the truth of her history, so shrouded in secrecy, narrator Ruth finds that she is also testing herself in a journey back in time. What she finally discovers on this journey is the state of exile common to her family, her race, and her sex. The reader most often accompanies her willingly, for as she travels she recalls three characters engaging in their own right: mother Rosa, grandmother Dora, and aunt Hetti. Pertinent to current events in Eastern Europe, this novel is easily recommended for public libraries and for academic libraries supporting women's studies or comparative religious studies.
- Joyce M. Latham, Southern Maryland Regional Lib., Charlotte, Md.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Attic Press
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0946211728
• ISBN 13: 9780946211722
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256