Red Shoes for Rachel: Three Novellas

by Boris Sandler, Barnett Zumoff (Translator)

Red Shoes for Rachel , Sandler’s award-winning collection of three novellas, features tightly wound tales that seamlessly incorporate diverse genres, including magic realism, satire, and autobiography, and profound psychological profiles to create touching portrayals of the human experience. Zumoff’s translation of Sandler’s original Yiddish collection makes the J. I. Segal Award–winning volume available to English readers for the first time. In the collection’s eponymous novella, Rachel, a daughter of Holocaust survivors raised in Brighton Beach, encounters a Moldovan Jewish immigrant divorcee as she is tending to her disabled, elderly mother along the Coney Island boardwalk. As the two begin a relationship, the story reveals their past and the commonalities between two children of Holocaust survivors raised in very different societies. In the novella Karolina Bugaz, an exhausted Moldovan Jewish immigrant architect leaves his wife and newly religious son behind to go on a cruise to a mysterious island, which may just be a direct voyage through space and time into his past. In the volume’s most acclaimed story, Halfway Down the Road Back to You , an elderly Moldovan Holocaust survivor in Israel separated from her children by emigration must confront her past as her failing mind begins to blur the boundaries between her daily life and the horrors of war sixty years before. The novella was adapted by the author into an acclaimed play, which has been staged in the United States, Belgium, and France.

Genres: Fiction

224 pages, Hardcover

Published May 18, 2017

Reviews

[Angela M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holocaust stories are hard to read to say the least. These stories are most times so brutal, so gut wrenching, so sad, taking us out of our comfort zone where we may not want to even imagine the horrors. And then I think how reading about it is not as brutal or horrific as experiencing it. I have frequently said that we just can't forget that it happened. So when I came across this collection of three novellas, I was drawn to it not just because I think it's important to continue to read and remember but also because these were stories that represented a place of the Holocaust I was not familiar with - Moldavia and I was also not familiar with this Yiddish author. In the forward Mikhail Krutikov talks about Sandler's native Bessarabia and it's people: "His characters come from the shtetlekh and villages of Podolia and Bessarabia, the old Jewish regions on the two banks of the Dniester rich in nature and history. But they are also haunted by the horrors of the Transnistrian ghettos and camps. Their stories are barely familiar to a Western audience, for whom the Holocaust means Auschwitz and Treblinka, or the ghettos of Warsaw d Vilna. The horrors of the Tulchyn ghetto and the Pechora labor camp remain part of the local memor, still preserved by the few survivors and their families around the world who remain afflicted by that trauma and pass it on to their children."

Sandler, with this translated from Yiddish collection of three novellas brings the story to those of us not familiar with it. "Halfway Down the Road Back to You" is about Sarah, a survivor who is uprooted with her adult children to Israel , but then they leave and she is left with her memories, her sometimes failing memory. She is asked to tell her story to The Spielberg Foundation Project and it is difficult. But Sanders insures that we know through Sarah's dreams and flashbacks of being rendered homeless and the horrors of what happened to her family. My rating for this one is 5 stars.

The second novella "Red Shoes for Rachel", is a lovely love story of two children of Holocaust survivors who meet in Brighton Beach in New York. Still such sadness here though in how the burden of the survivors becomes the burden of their children. Hopeful and poignant and 5 stars for this one.

I didn't quite connect with the characters of "Karolino-Bugaz" as I did in the first two. It didn't feel long enough for me to get to know them and about their past. The husband leaves after 30 years of marriage and the insertion of some magical realism when he goes on a cruise left me even further disconnect. 2.5 stars for this one.
I'm glad to have read this collection. A wonderful translation, a learning experience and that necessary reminder we cannot let this happen again.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Syracuse University Press through Edelweiss.

[Lauri · Rating 3 out of 5]

These three novellas are quick to read and share the aftermath of individuals and families who were affected by the Holocaust and emigrated to Israel and the United States.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. It was happy and sad and funny and it made me cry! Especially the main story "Red Shoes for Rachel"