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Heirlooms: stories
Fiction. Jewish Studies. Winner of the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, selected by Marge Piercy. HEIRLOOMS begins in the French seaside city of Saint-Malo, in 1939, and ends in the American Midwest in 1989. In these linked stories, the war reverberates through four generations of a Jewish family. Inspired by the author's family stories as well as extensive research, HEIRLOOMS explores assumptions about love, duty, memory and truth.
192 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
August 14, 2016
I don't read a lot of short story collections but the ones that I enjoy the most are those where the stories are linked in some meaningful way. The stories here are connected by a family spanning 50 years from WWII to 1989. Lise, a Jewish woman, her husband Jean, and her brother Alain's daughter, Eugenie, flee from city to city in France over the war years, for a visit to Tel Aviv and finally to America in 1947. I have to say that at first, I found it hard to connect with the characters, and perhaps that's one of the things that makes short stories hard for me to grasp sometimes.
But then I read the middle story of the book titled "Heirlooms" as the collection is named and this is by far my favorite. The writing for me came to life as did the characters with the telling of the things they left behind - family , graves, baby things -hand made clothes , a carriage, friends. "They left words, phrases, a sureness with language. Their mother tongue. They left their names ...,"
The writing is spare but beautiful and full of the sadness depicting the losses, including things they wanted to leave behind, and then the things they could not leave behind. I read it twice . It's in this story that I felt I came to know what their life was like before coming to America. I almost wish this had been the first story in the collection, letting the others take us back in time and back again. From here on, I loved the writing, cared about the characters. From that story on it had the feel of a novel to me. My other favorite was the final story "In the Cemeteries of Saint-Malo." Highly recommended, even if you don't usually read short stories, like me. This really was one story and a beautiful one, based on the author's family.
Thanks to BkMk Press/The University of Missouri-Kansas City and NetGalley.
October 7, 2016
Check out this Q&A with the author: http://www.erikadreifus.com/resources....
July 31, 2017
Disclaimer: I've known Rachel Hall since we were at Knox College together, so these stories would have been a joy to read no matter what, just for her voice and wry humor and the memories they evoke. Though that friendship is what prompted me to buy and read Heirlooms, I can sincerely say this is a great book, and one I would highly recommend to anyone, especially if you're interested in World War II (especially the Holocaust, the resistance, and collaboration in France) and how it is remembered (or misremembered). Issues of immigration, race, and discrimination in the U.S. are also folded into the stories as time progresses. It is no wonder that Marge Piercy selected Heirlooms for the C. S. Sharar Chandra Prize. These stories are tightly crafted with economical language and image that nonetheless pack an enormous emotional punch. They are deeply philosophical without being ponderous. They explore the past and our tempestuous relationship with it, clouded with guilt, understandable revisionism, and attempts at retrieval of the stories that have been lost. Individually, each story is poignant. When taken together as a collection, the stories speak to one another and build deeper themes that will reward multiple readings. Characters appear and reappear in new contexts, giving the reader multiple perspectives on their stories as we follow the main characters through four generations.
October 16, 2016
HEIRLOOMS is an absolutely exquisite book, each tale an "heirloom" in its own right. The book is technically a collection of linked stories, but it has the forward momentum of a novel. In other words, I couldn't put it down. Hall understands this period of history. She understands people and exile and how how the carnage of war leaves a different mark on each member of a family and ripples through generations. Brilliant. This would be a terrific book club pick.
November 4, 2019
This collection of linked stories, inspired by Hall's family history before, during, and after WWII, is urgent and necessary, particularly now, when direct testimony by those who have lived through the Holocaust is becoming more and more rare. These stories read like a novel--it's a thin line, I suppose--and I could not put it down. The prose is spare but confident, with lines that go straight for the heart. The collection forms the linked story of Hall's family as they flee the Nazi occupation, and in the meantime struggle to maintain a normal life, hidden in plain sight as Jews at a time when one's bloodline can be a death sentence. The quotidian acts of life in Hall's expert hands become desperate statements: falling in love, finding food, struggling with illness, attempting to put down roots in foreign places. As one whose family history is somewhat similar, each story resonated with me on so many levels. Each one made me realize how many questions I still have, and how there is, sadly, no one left now to answer them. How fortunate that Hall has made a gift to the world of her own stories, and how fortunate I am to have found them. This book should be required reading in high school.
March 25, 2017
A near pitch-perfect book of tender, beautifully painted short stories about one family and its extensions--friends, acquaintances--during and after World War II. The prose is fine, like clear water; you hardly notice its style, yet it has one, precise, lapidary, almost Flaubertian at times in its precision, but never showing off. The style flags just a tiny bit in some of the end stories, which move to the American descendants and their thoughts and problems--perhaps because these seem so prosaic by comparison, or so familiar, they don't grip the reader quite as the first 2/3 of the book does. Never mind: the last sentence of the last story leaves you gasping, and glad you read all the way through, and eager to reread the whole book. This ought to be out with a major press, and celebrated in major publications.
March 16, 2017
Read this book! I loved it. Loved the characters, loved the setting, loved the collection of stories.
November 23, 2016
Rachel Hall's book was part of the One Read celebration this year. The book was featured as a "local memoir" and Rachel was in town to do a reading. Like George Hodgkin, she is a local author, having grown up in Columbia, where her mother continues to reside. I went to the reading and purchased a copy of the book, winner of the GS Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction (judged by my hero, Marge Piercy), and published by BKMK Press, at the University of Missouri Kansas City. The book is a collection of stories about Rachel's mother's family. 1940 Rachel's mother was adopted by her mother's sister when her mother died shortly after giving birth on St. Malo. In family is Jewish, and they must find a way to leave France. Rachel's mother grows up in the Bay area, moving eventually to Columbia where Rachel will grow up. The book is a collection of short stories that give us glimpses of various members of this family, engaged in resistance during WWII, encountering betrayal and friendship, immigrating to the US and to Israel, raising children, growing old. The form of the book underlines the way that we only know bits of our family stories. Some pieces get left behind, others can't be told. The writing is beautiful, a real pleasure to read. I especially liked how many of the stories hinged on relationships among women, and their complicated experiences of pregnancy and infertility. Heirlooms succeeds in both conveying the intimacy of these relationships, but also gesturing to large themes that continue to be important in our world with its own exiled peoples.
December 22, 2016
You know that feeling when you pick up a book and start reading and quickly understand that you've found a journey you didn't know you needed? That's how I felt reading Rachel Hall’s debut collection of interconnected stories. She invites us into a Jewish family, before and after the Holocaust, in France and Israel and the United States. Quietly and lyrically, Hall explores the profound ties immigrants feel to our past, our losses, our dreams, and each other. This is a wonderful and moving reading experience.
October 6, 2016
Truly a beautiful book. If you are a fan of Alice Munro's writing, you will be a fan of Heirlooms. These are linked short stories in a short book, but you will want to give yourself time to read them more than once so you can appreciate how every word matters.
August 7, 2017
This is a beautiful book of stories. One of a kind, really. It deserves a lot more attention than it's been getting. Not only is it exquisitely written, with a prose so tight it borders on poetry, but its subject is incredibly significant and its emotional content is enough to sock you in the heart. I'm surprised the publisher (BkMk) did not market it as a novel in stories because it carries the full arc of a novel. The reader sees, from story to story, the characters of the first story--Lise, a Jewish woman from Palestine; her husband Jean, a French gentile; and their adopted daughter Eugenia, who is the biological daughter of her twin brother and his deceased wife--struggle to survive in a mostly Nazi occupied France and then after the war make their to the United States, where they settle in California. It's a multi-genearational saga shown from the vantage points not only of different family members but occasionally people entirely outside the family who nonetheless--through Hall's cagily indirect narration--finally interact with the family, sometimes with devastating consequences. The best example of that is "La Pousette," in which a jealous gentile woman informs he gendarmes that a Jewish family is secretly among them, forcing the family's last minute escape. That's a story I won't soon forget. Or, for that matter, "Leaving the Occupied Zone" which shows exactly and brutally how much Lise had to sacrifice to escape to safety with Eugenia.
World War Two has been depicted in countless films, novels, and stories, but this book feels truly new in the extent to which it is grounded in the French civilian experience of that war, also in its broad historical scope. After all, a book that begins in the early years of the war ends in the 1990s, with a powerfully rendered return to France by Eugenia, who has long lived in the U.S. and gone by the more Anglo-sounding name Genny. That last story, "In the Cemeteries of Saint-Malo" is absolutely masterful, about the soundest end for a story collection I can ever recall. It wraps together and brings home a narrative that has spanned many decades and many countries. Along the way we learn a lot more about Lise's twin brother Alain, we meet their mother, who lives in Palestine, and we watch Eugenia's daughter Sophie grow from a disaffected teenager, struggling as a Jew in the very Anglo American Midwest, nearly as alienated there as her older relatives were in Nazi-run France, into a mature, self-reliant businesswoman and single mother. The full weight of all the characters and all their stories comes home brilliantly in "In the Cemetaries of Saint-Malo."
World War Two has been depicted in countless films, novels, and stories, but this book feels truly new in the extent to which it is grounded in the French civilian experience of that war, also in its broad historical scope. After all, a book that begins in the early years of the war ends in the 1990s, with a powerfully rendered return to France by Eugenia, who has long lived in the U.S. and gone by the more Anglo-sounding name Genny. That last story, "In the Cemeteries of Saint-Malo" is absolutely masterful, about the soundest end for a story collection I can ever recall. It wraps together and brings home a narrative that has spanned many decades and many countries. Along the way we learn a lot more about Lise's twin brother Alain, we meet their mother, who lives in Palestine, and we watch Eugenia's daughter Sophie grow from a disaffected teenager, struggling as a Jew in the very Anglo American Midwest, nearly as alienated there as her older relatives were in Nazi-run France, into a mature, self-reliant businesswoman and single mother. The full weight of all the characters and all their stories comes home brilliantly in "In the Cemetaries of Saint-Malo."
May 12, 2019
Heirlooms is a terrific collection of linked stories that could easily have been billed as a novel. It centers around three generations of an extended family: Lise and her husband Jean, Lise’s twin Alain and his daughter Eugenie, and later Eugenie’s daughter Sophie. The book begins in war-time France; the men are in the French Resistance and Lise, like all Jews at the time, must try to escape to the unoccupied zone with Eugenie. The family finally gets its papers to move to the United States after the war, where they rebuild their lives, try to come to terms with the past and the realities of being foreigners and Jews in the mid-west. Each story is exquisitely written and by the end I’d come to feel that the characters could have been my own family. I’ll be looking forward to Rachel Hall’s next book!
July 15, 2018
Some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever encountered. I was lucky enough to hear the author at a reading and have been loving having Heirlooms on my nightstand. Just when you think you’ve read so much about the Holocaust - here is a gem of many stories woven together which will not be forgotten. Beautiful. I will read again!
June 2, 2017
I enjoyed these linked short stories about a French Jewish family before, during, and after the Holocaust. I felt most connected to the stories about Alain, Lise, and Jean.
November 30, 2017
See my review at http://www.thereportergroup.org/Artic...
February 26, 2018
Simply stunning collection.
November 10, 2018
A beautifully written collection of stories that intertwine to create a poignant whole, illustrating the resiliency of the human spirit in the midst of trauma's legacy.
August 16, 2020
I loved how the characters were intertwined and we got to learn more and more about them as each short story progressed
Hall is an amazingly talented writer, who has a high command of prose.
Hall is an amazingly talented writer, who has a high command of prose.
November 18, 2020
This book filled with short stories that created a space to feel for the author. I loved how honest the writing was and what the stories shared with the audience. It was wonderfully written.
March 2, 2017
A book of interconnecting stories of a family in occupied France during WWII and after. The stories move gracefully, linearly through time and space (from France to the United States and back again). I enjoyed all the stories and thought all were well-written, but if you read nothing else, I would recommend one of the stories above all others. It comes towards the end of the book-- Block Party-- and deals with a character only tangential to the rest of the stories, but I have to say, I read this story days ago and I am still thinking about it. I don't want to describe it too much because I don't think I am a talented enough reviewer to distill the story into a few meaningful words, but the way Hall has written about loss and memory and trauma and how people might deal with truly horrible things that happen to them in life deeply connected me to the story in a way few pieces of writing have. 'Nough said. Go read it.
January 9, 2017
This reads like a book more than a collection of short stories. I suppose you could read each as a stand alone, however imo they are stronger together. highly moving. i couldnt put it down.
December 13, 2016
My book club friends know I'm not a big fan of short stories, but because Rachel Hall is an acquaintance and a local writer, I read her book, and was well rewarded. The characters in these stories appear throughout many of the stories in the book, across generations and continents, beginning with WWII era Europe and crossing the Atlantic to the US. They are well drawn and believable. Occasionally the writing is a bit more 'telling' than 'showing', often in concluding sentences where points are emphasized by additional phrases. But overall the writing is vigorous and poetic, and I was easily drawn in. Highly recommend this book!
January 25, 2017
I don't normally love short stories as they can be unsatisfying to me. But I loved this collection. What made it different is the stories are linked by on or more characters. It's typically not apparent at the beginning how so I found myself eagerly reading to find the connection.
June 1, 2020
This collection of (tightly) linked stories beautifully illustrates how families metabolize trauma over time, from one generation to the next. And it's a reminder of how we never know the backgrounds from which people have come.
November 18, 2016
Check out my review on Diary of an Eccentric
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January 28, 2026hall is a wonderful writer and a beautiful person!
November 27, 2017
Gorgeous. I was captivated by these linked tales, totally enveloped by time and narrative.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews