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Hidden Life: A Memoir of August 1969
For years, Johanna Reiss’ American husband, Jim, encouraged her to return to Holland to chronicle the two years, seven months, and one day she had spent hiding from the Nazis in rural Usselo, Holland. In 1969, she finally made the trip.
Accompanied by Jim and their two young children, Reiss intended to spend seven weeks researching the book that would eventually become The ...more
Accompanied by Jim and their two young children, Reiss intended to spend seven weeks researching the book that would eventually become The ...more
Hardcover, 250 pages
Published
January 27th 2009
by Melville House Publishing
(first published August 1st 2008)
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Johanna Reiss's husband, Jim, encouraged her to return to her hometown in rural Holland to write a book about the two years she spent in hiding from the Nazis during WWII.
She returns to Holland with her two young daughters in 1969 and Jim joins them during their trip for a short visit. Jim returns home and commits suicide soon after arriving back home. That's what the memoir is basically about.
The huge problem I had with this book was Reiss's stream of consciousness w...more
She returns to Holland with her two young daughters in 1969 and Jim joins them during their trip for a short visit. Jim returns home and commits suicide soon after arriving back home. That's what the memoir is basically about.
The huge problem I had with this book was Reiss's stream of consciousness w...more
Dwight
added it
That Johanna was able to continue with her project, publishing her book as well as take care of her two daughters in the wake of her husband’s suicide, speaks volumes about her strength and determination. While no answers emerge, I do admire her laying bare everything, for better or worse, for everyone to see and experience. Unfortunately it is the ‘worse’ part which has lingered for me.
http://bookcents.blogspot.com/2010/01/hi...
http://bookcents.blogspot.com/2010/01/hi...
At her American husband's urging, this Dutch woman who survived WWII as a Jewish girl hidden in a farmer's closet, returns in the 1960s to interview the couple who hid her so she can write a book. In stream of consciousness prose, she recounts that trip and her abrupt return when she is informed that her handsome, loving husband has committed suicide while she and their daughters were in Holland.
This was a slower moving book for me. I found myself mad at her husband for the way he left this woman that had already been through too much. She of course goes back through all the simple choices she made in her marriage and blames herself for her husband's suicide, but as the reader you realize how absurd this theory is. I liked her writing style, but found so little joy in this book.
Johanna Reiss is the author of the classic young adult title The Upstairs Room, which Elie Wiesel praised in The New York Times Book Review as an “admirable account . . . as important in every respect as the one bequeathed to us by Anne Frank.” She is the winner of the Newbery Honor, the Jewish Book Council Children’s Book Award, and the Buxtehuder Bulle. She lives in New York City.
I tried really hard to get into this book and just couldn't. I really wanted to like it but it was flat and a little confusing for me.
Wendy
marked it as to-read
Thanks for pointing this out, Shelley! THE UPSTAIRS ROOM is a dearly loved favorite.
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a stunning memoir of a simple truth - there is no way out from the tragedy and loss of the Nazi cruelties and the young lives caught in that net.
Definitely a downer. Very stream of consciousness. Adds a lot of insight into The Hidden Room.
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Shelves:
to-read-biography,
to-read-interloan-sd
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Dutch-born American writer presenting her Jewish childhood in the Netherlands during the Holocaust. The multi award-winning 1972 'The Upstairs Rooms', where she describes how she and her sister survived WWII in hiding, has remained a YA classic.
Her latest, 'A Hidden Life', is a memoir for adults: in it she writes of her childhood traumas and her late husband's sudden suicide.
More about Johanna Reiss...
Her latest, 'A Hidden Life', is a memoir for adults: in it she writes of her childhood traumas and her late husband's sudden suicide.
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