Larry Duberstein's Blog, page 2
November 3, 2014
Small Press Reviews
A tragic, hopeful, finely wrought novel about the possibility of possibility even under impossible circumstances, Larry Duberstein’s Five Bullets offers a heartrending examination of the Holocaust and its aftermath.
The book consists of two intertwined novellas. In one, Karel Bondy is a family man who watches helplessly as everyone he loves is murdered by the Nazi war machine. In the other, Karel reinvents himself as Carl Barry and gradually builds a new life for himself in America. Yet even as his new life comes together, Carl is haunted by the memories of those he lost as well as by everything he did to survive and, perhaps more to the point, to take revenge upon the officer who oversaw the systematic murder of his family. Throughout the narrative, Carl emerges as a curious creature, a man with a clearly delineated past and present that are at once wholly separate yet simultaneously inseparable.
Early on, Carl reflects, “When millions are killed, when an entire race of widows and widowers is created—such a time might call for a brand new category, and a new word to define those few who were not killed.” In essence, Five Bullets sheds light on the struggle to define that category, and Carl’s ceaseless effort to suppress his own memories of the past speaks in large part to everybody’s fraught relationship with history. We are made of memories both joyful and tragic, Carl’s story suggests, and we can only find ourselves when we pay due respect to the full emotional range of our experiences.
Haunting as it is compelling, Five Bullets offers an engaging, intelligent meditation on memory, hope, and survival.
Theodore Rosengarten
“More people learn about the Holocaust from fiction than from anything else, and readers will learn more from Duberstein’s daring, elegant, introspective masterpiece than any other novel I know. Five Bullets is a new page in the career of one of America’s great anti-establishment writers.”
Theodore Rosengarten, MacArthur Fellow, National Book Award winner, Professor of Jewish Studies
Kirkus Reviews
A character study built around an appalling historical period and a testimony to the strength of the wounded spirit's ability to endure and live a meaningful, if not entirely happy, life. In the summer of 1936, Karel Bondy and his wife—Czechoslovakian Jews raising three young children in Prague—are happy and free. But their idyllic life is forever changed in 1943, when the Nazis sweep in and "relocate" the family to a holding camp in Terezin, and from there, the dreaded train takes them to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Men are separated from women and children, and this is the last time Karel sees his family. We experience the horrors of Auschwitz through Karel's eyes and come to understand that some experiences are worse than death. Karel and a few others attempt escape and miraculously find themselves outside the camp. Survival instinct rules, and not everyone makes it, but Karel manages to live. Later, he resumes his life as Carl Barry in the United States, only to find the country surprisingly "forgetful" just seven years after the death of Hitler: "Seven years is not even time enough to go gray or get fat. Certainly not to forget." Duberstein alternates between Karel's life in Europe and Carl's in America, taking readers to the year 2000, when for a dying Carl, past and present begin to merge in a sensitive ending. Through it all, Duberstein treats readers to Karel's introspective, intelligent and ironic view on all that comes to pass. He's a memorable, complex character. One man, two lives. Duberstein (The Twoweeks, 2012, etc.) creates a powerful story of humanity and inhumanity in this tale of war, survival and healing.
Foreword Reviews
Duberstein captures heartbreaking ennui with his disciplined volley between time periods and details stabbing out at unexpected moments.
Five Bullets is a story of two men—Karel Bondy, a father and husband who escaped from Auschwitz and struggled to trust and hope for absolution, and Carl Barry, an immigrant entrepreneur in America whose dry personality and curt mannerisms mystify and endear him to his new wife and his young nephew. Although they are one and the same, author Larry Duberstein keeps readers oscillating between time periods in a steady cadence that broadens the chasm between the fiery Karel and the hardened Carl. As the memories of one merge with the determined will of the other, Duberstein produces an intimate sense of mortal purgatory, which can be heartbreaking while it achieves its own predictable monotony.
When we are introduced to Karel in 1936, he is a promising architect with enthusiasm for the simple beauties of his work, his wife, and his prospects. During his years in America, he sees financial success in New York as a builder and has relationships with friends and family, but the perspective has changed. Contentment and even happiness are without the beauty of hope.
As they face being relocated to a prison camp, Karel’s wife, who wants to protect the innocence of her children for as long as possible, tells Karel, “Okay, be the outraged citizen. The abused, the persecuted—I don’t disagree. Just first of all be the Poppa.” The strength and sacrifice of being who he must be in order to protect his children is inspiring and becomes all the more profound later in his life when Karel can no longer recall his children’s names. Similarly, after Karel escapes, he joins a small army of resistance fighters in the woods. They conduct small raids and create whatever obstacles they can for the Germans; they wait to ambush soldiers who are leading a group of naked women through the snow into the woods for execution. The confusion, horror, and chaos of the scene that ensues is briefly but expertly written.
After the war, Karel’s encounters seem to carry the weight of this and so many other brutalities as he tries to reclaim his humanity, but the tremendous success of Duberstein’s story is that Karel’s reclamation takes a lifetime. Duberstein never lets pure horror or momentary beauty disconnect the reader from the story he has to tell. He balances each vignette of this one man’s two lives on a foundation of masterful writing.
Sara Budzik
