The Magic We Do Here

Chaim Turkow, the blond and blue-eyed son of a Jewish innkeeper in Poland relies on his appearance and his wits to escape the Nazi Holocaust

This first novel about a young, blond and blue-eyed Jew who lives by his wits in order to survive the Nazi invasion of Poland is a stirring testimony both to history and to its author's narrative skill. The inevitable comparisons to The Painted Bird are valid, but where Kosinski lingers over mind-destroying horrors, Rudner has created a more graceful and poetic study in sadness. Chaim Turkov, born after five daughters to a quick-tempered innkeeper in the village of Nowy Dwor, is a brilliant scholar by age four. But an accident leaves him mute for a time, and, though his speech eventually returns, it is as an idiot servant that Chaim later masquerades. Chaim has been apprenticed to a photographer, as his speechless years have robbed him of any interest in the Talmud (despite his father's hopes, Chaim would only doodle drawings in the endpapers of prayerbooks). Now he bears witness to the Nazi invasion, from Nowy Dwor to one terrible glimpse of the Warsaw ghetto. He makes pictures, with a camera, with a pencil, out of wire, with a stick in dirt or snow and, in this way, makes a record so the world will know. He befriends a dwarf magician who teaches him to see beauty, in spite of the evil all around, and is thus saved from madness as the Russians advance and the war, for Chaim, is over. While at times constrained by a need to fit into an old-fashioned storytelling tradition, this is a rich book that is filled with moving and evocative images of a lost world.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This first novel recounts the adventures of Chaim Turkow, a blond, blue-eyed Jewish boy who passes himself off as a mentally retarded Aryan during the Nazi invasion of Poland. Eventually, Chaim's mental deterioration is no longer an act, but he never loses his talent for drawing; his vivid sketches constitute a priceless record of the lost world of Polish Jews. Rudner models his book on the folktale, a boldif largely unsuccessfulstylistic gamble. Novelistic concerns such as character development and motivation are ignored; instead, an omniscient narrator speaks to us directly, interpreting key events. The message is that any reminder of the Holocaust is important, but one is not necessarily as good as another. Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.