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Other People's Houses
Originally published in 1964 and hailed by critics including Cynthia Ozick and Elie Wiesel, Other People's Houses is Lore Segal's internationally acclaimed semi-autobiographical first novel. Nine months after Hitler takes Austria, a ten-year-old girl leaves Vienna aboard a children's transport that is to take her and several hundred children to safety in England. For the next seven years she lives in "other people's houses," the homes of the wealthy Orthodox Jewish Levines, the working-class Hoopers, and two elderly sisters in their formal Victorian household. An insightful and witty depiction of the ways of life of those who gave her refuge, Other People's Houses is a wonderfully memorable novel of the immigrant experience.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
288 people are currently reading
1652 people want to read
About the author
Lore Segal
39 books138 followersLore Vailer Segal was an Austrian-American novelist, translator, teacher, short story writer, and author of children's books. Her novel Shakespeare's Kitchen was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.
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October 15, 2022
In 1938 ten year old Lore goes on a 'Kindertransport' train from Vienna to England. This is her story, how she stayed with several families, living in 'other people's houses'. This is more of a coming of age novel than a war story. Because of the dates mentioned you know this took place during the war, but there's hardly any reference to it.
The author has been brutally honest about herself, or perhaps she invented a new self. Anyway, I couldn't bring myself to like her, I thought she was very selfish, also towards her parents who followed her to England a year later.
The author has been brutally honest about herself, or perhaps she invented a new self. Anyway, I couldn't bring myself to like her, I thought she was very selfish, also towards her parents who followed her to England a year later.
September 26, 2014
I really feel humble to write this review for an autobiographical memoir by an award-winning author who was nominated for the Pullitzer Prize in 2008. Then I console myself with the idea that I am an ordinary reader with limited knowledge of literature and creative writing. It is kind of a relief, since it allows me to use a creative freedom in my review for which I do not have to apologize!
Other People's Houses deals with a ten-year old Jewish girl's life after Hitler came into power and Jewish people were removed from society in Europe. Jewish children were ostracized, isolated, threatened, bullied and assaulted. No more non-Jewish friends. They were barred from parks, theaters and schools. Teachers refused to teach them. Parents were stripped from their citizenship and jobs.
The memoir is written with an honesty and humbleness, commemorating the life of an only child who had to be sent off on the Children's Train from Austria to England, not knowing if she will ever see her family again.
In the preface of the book, the author explains the tone of her memoir:
Her mainstay was the contact she maintained with her parents through letters. Each letter had an uncertain destination in Austria. Making friends was a challenge. She was overbearing and demanding, often spiteful, but mostly misunderstood by grown-ups who did not realize the urgency and scope of the horror of Eugenics and the Holocaust playing itself out in Europe. While she tried to assimilate into a new country, new language, new culture, she relentlessly campaigned for exit visas for her parents. Her father, formerly a senior accountant at a bank, and her mother, a qualified music teacher and housewife, eventually acquired work visas as domestic workers. It was the only option available to them.
Her experiences and thoughts, as a foster child, which she wrote down in a purple notebook at the time, would become Other People's Houses. It was first published in 1964. These valuable notes and memories enabled the author to remain true to the young girl's emotional intelligence in that period of her life. The honesty in the book validates the experience. For instance, as a young girl, unable to fully comprehend the minds of adults, she pushed her seriously ill dad to fall, subconsciously expressing her feelings of anger and hopelessness against him for being unable to take care of her and her hardworking mother in England. Her cruelty towards her grandmother when she destroyed the latter's illusions and admiration of Liberace on the black and white television set in their two-room apartment in New York, takes some courage to admit! Even her cruelty towards a fellow Kinder Transport friend is explained in detail.
This is a story of immigration and assimilation. Of finding new social bonds within challenging circumstances. It is the story of a lonely little girl who translated pain, guilt, grief, agony, stress and constant fear into suppressed anger, arrogance, ungratefulness, often rudeness and stubbornness. It made her unlikable. Although her parents were able to escape to England, they were not allowed, as domestics, to accommodate her into their lives. Domestics were not allowed to have their children living with them.
It is unsure why this book is called a semiautobiographical novel. It just doesn't fit a factual memoir, written in the first person (the author does explain in the preface why she wrote it this way, though). Her relationships with her family, their journeys to safety, and their new lives in England, the Dominican Republic and eventually America, was very well written. She had to live with a grandma who had one aim in life and that was to insult the entire world, beginning in the family, rippling out to neighbors and strangers. Grandma targeted the individual members of humanity one by one, everywhere she landed up.
Lore had to face the disappointment in her hero, uncle Paul, who never could find his groove. She had to discover love in unexpected places, often misconstrued and misunderstood. It would take her many years of experiences, to finally figure it out. Through circumstances, she herself had to close up, was forced to become emotionally arrested, to protect herself against the hurt of strangers. She learnt as a young girl not to trust.
The picturesque prose kept me riveted to the book. I did not expect a story with a beginning, a middle and an end with drama worming through the tale. But the author's narrative skill painted a perfect landscape of displaced people who had to re-align themselves into humanity. She told the story so well, that it became one of the best memoirs I have ever read.
The documentary film "Into The Arms Of Strangers" , winner of the Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 2000, visually enhances this book. Both Lore and her mother Franzi, who lived to the ripe old age of 100, was interviewed for this documentary. It is recommended to everyone interested in this story! In fact, when I closed the book and thought about the review, I sat for long while thinking about this little girl. It encouraged me to read more about the Kindertransport. Watching the documentary had the tears rolling down my face. Everybody simply need to watch it!
An estimated sixty million people died in the deadliest military conflict in history. Which means that 54 million people died during the Second World War, trying to stop Hitler's expansionism and his continuing killing of more than the already 6 million Jewish people. In the same period spanning between 1934 to well into the 1950s, another thirty million Chinese people lost their lives due to starvation under the Mau regime. How can you not cry, thinking about the horror of it all? I was thinking about the parents who have sent their children into battle, including millions of non-Jewish people, who ultimately paid the price for freedom for all. My dad went to the same war, fighting on the British side, and came home a totally different, almost unrecognizable person. I was born many years later and was told his story when I was a young woman.
The book is so well-written, however, it is a pity that there were so many gaps left in it. Some experiences never made a full circle. It was just left hanging. It is neither acceptable in a memoir, nor a novel, IMHO.
For instance: the little girl, who became a strong survivor, had one wish, and that was to make friends, be accepted, understood and loved. Although she did not express love in any form in the book, it is evident in her treatment of the people she cared about. She found it difficult to connect to young men, although she wanted to get married and have children. Some of her colorful, notorious romantic experiences are described in the book. But the man she would ultimately marry just fleetingly graced the tale, without any explanation of how they met, or how the relationship culminated into marriage. Her quest for romance is a sub plot in the story, and creates an expectation with the reader. It was just left hanging sterile out to dry in this particular instance. I haven't read the author's other books, but from reading a biography of her life, it seems as though all her books, written for adults, must be read to get the full picture. Her writing is also influenced by the magic realism which was started by Garcia Marquez. It became the axle of her writing adventures.
The book ends where she is financially barely surviving as a some sort of painter of graphic designs, after working as a receptionist and a filing clerk before that. In a sense there is little evidence of any joie de vivre displayed in the book. A cold, emotionally devoid cynism, intentional or unintentional, winds its way through the entire story. Readers who do not appreciate direct,frank, almost blatant, honesty, will find some of the protagonist's actions offensive. For others, it might be refreshing. I loved it.
The story concludes with a young woman disappearing into mediocrity. It doesn't make sense for a girl who had too much shutzpah to let it happen! But then again, it is based on reality. Personally, I would have preferred the inclusion of her later accomplishments as a teacher at various universities. She won several literary awards. The book could have celebrated the spirit of a survivor and a fighter. It would have validated the little girl who had to survive on her own and made it. The book could have been so much more. However, the title says it all. It was the first phase of a displaced person's life who were forced to become part of the furniture in other people's cultures, beliefs, homes and lives. Therefore, the tale concludes where she ends this period of her life.
The story was well-focused and the economical use of words eliminated any possibility of word-dumping. I still would have loved to know if Lore loved flowers, or became enchanted by a rainbow, or ever bonded with a pet. Was there anything that balanced out the challenges she had to endure? Which positive factors, impressions or experiences completed her persona? Was there just not room for it in the book, or was it absent in her life? Which part of her young life inspired her positively; which memories did she left behind. Did she ever experienced happiness? Which elements of her new adopted country was embraced or appreciated? Was there anything she appreciated in other cultures?
Nevertheless, this was still a magical literary experience. A wonderful, endearing, excellent piece of writing. What a joy!
RECOMMENDED!
This was Lore Segal's first novel and brought her international acclaim.
The book was provided by Open Road Media through Netgalley for review. Thank you very much for this wonderful experience.
Other People's Houses deals with a ten-year old Jewish girl's life after Hitler came into power and Jewish people were removed from society in Europe. Jewish children were ostracized, isolated, threatened, bullied and assaulted. No more non-Jewish friends. They were barred from parks, theaters and schools. Teachers refused to teach them. Parents were stripped from their citizenship and jobs.
From the foreword by Cynthia Ozick:Lore Groszmann remembered the first ten years of her life in Austria, the following ten years in England, three years as a young woman in the Dominican Republic and then New York. From a bitterly cold December night, 1938 to the 1st of May 1951 was the period she had to survive until their permit to enter the USA was granted.
" In 1938 a particular noisy special train from Vienna--it carried the frenetic atmosphere of a school bus--was stopped in Germany to be checked for contraband. The passengers fell silent with fear, as if each one secretly suspected herself of being a smuggler. Then the signal was given to pass on, and all at once the cars began to vibrate with singing and cheers, just as though school holiday had suddenly been declared. And, in a macabre way, so it had, since all the passengers were Jewish schoolchildren, and all of them had been expelled--from school, from home, from country. Their excursion was names the Children's Transport (the parents were to follow later), but it might more accurately have been called Children's Pilgrimage. For some--those who embarked in Holland--it was a delayed pilgrimage to the death camps. For the rest--among them Lore Groszmann Segal, the author of these memoirs, then ten years old--it was a pilgrimage towards joyless England and the disabilities of exile, and, more poignantly, toward a permanent sense of being human contraband."
The memoir is written with an honesty and humbleness, commemorating the life of an only child who had to be sent off on the Children's Train from Austria to England, not knowing if she will ever see her family again.
In the preface of the book, the author explains the tone of her memoir:
" I am at pains to draw no facile conclusions--and all conclusions seem facile to me. If I want to trace the present from the occurrences of the past I must do it in the manner of the novelist. I posit myself as protagonist in the autobiographical action. Who emerges?The engaging tale described the mental tools she had to develop to survive on her own being moved from one foster home to the next. She became accustomed to the class system in England, by being moved from the wealthy family of a Jewish furniture manufacturer in Liverpool - an Orthodox family who spoke Yiddish, which she couldn't understand or identify with at all, to a railroad stoker and his family, a milkman's family and the upper class of Guilford where her mother later would work as a maid. She would be living with five different families: There were the Levines, the Willoughbys, The Grinsleys, and finally Miss Douglas and Mrs. Dillon.
A tough enough old bird, of the species survivor, naturilized not in North America so much as in Manhattan, on Riverside Drive. Leaving home and parents gave strength at a cost. I remember knowing I should be crying like the little girl in the train across from me, but I kept thinking, "Wow! I'm off to England"-- a survival trick with a price tag. Cut yourself off, at ten years, from feelings that can't otherwise be mastered, and it takes decades to become reattached. My father died in 1945, but tears did not come until 1968, when David, my American husband, insisted I owed myself a return to my childhood. I cried the whole week in Vienna, and all over the Austrian Alps."
Her mainstay was the contact she maintained with her parents through letters. Each letter had an uncertain destination in Austria. Making friends was a challenge. She was overbearing and demanding, often spiteful, but mostly misunderstood by grown-ups who did not realize the urgency and scope of the horror of Eugenics and the Holocaust playing itself out in Europe. While she tried to assimilate into a new country, new language, new culture, she relentlessly campaigned for exit visas for her parents. Her father, formerly a senior accountant at a bank, and her mother, a qualified music teacher and housewife, eventually acquired work visas as domestic workers. It was the only option available to them.
Her experiences and thoughts, as a foster child, which she wrote down in a purple notebook at the time, would become Other People's Houses. It was first published in 1964. These valuable notes and memories enabled the author to remain true to the young girl's emotional intelligence in that period of her life. The honesty in the book validates the experience. For instance, as a young girl, unable to fully comprehend the minds of adults, she pushed her seriously ill dad to fall, subconsciously expressing her feelings of anger and hopelessness against him for being unable to take care of her and her hardworking mother in England. Her cruelty towards her grandmother when she destroyed the latter's illusions and admiration of Liberace on the black and white television set in their two-room apartment in New York, takes some courage to admit! Even her cruelty towards a fellow Kinder Transport friend is explained in detail.
This is a story of immigration and assimilation. Of finding new social bonds within challenging circumstances. It is the story of a lonely little girl who translated pain, guilt, grief, agony, stress and constant fear into suppressed anger, arrogance, ungratefulness, often rudeness and stubbornness. It made her unlikable. Although her parents were able to escape to England, they were not allowed, as domestics, to accommodate her into their lives. Domestics were not allowed to have their children living with them.
It is unsure why this book is called a semiautobiographical novel. It just doesn't fit a factual memoir, written in the first person (the author does explain in the preface why she wrote it this way, though). Her relationships with her family, their journeys to safety, and their new lives in England, the Dominican Republic and eventually America, was very well written. She had to live with a grandma who had one aim in life and that was to insult the entire world, beginning in the family, rippling out to neighbors and strangers. Grandma targeted the individual members of humanity one by one, everywhere she landed up.
Lore had to face the disappointment in her hero, uncle Paul, who never could find his groove. She had to discover love in unexpected places, often misconstrued and misunderstood. It would take her many years of experiences, to finally figure it out. Through circumstances, she herself had to close up, was forced to become emotionally arrested, to protect herself against the hurt of strangers. She learnt as a young girl not to trust.
The picturesque prose kept me riveted to the book. I did not expect a story with a beginning, a middle and an end with drama worming through the tale. But the author's narrative skill painted a perfect landscape of displaced people who had to re-align themselves into humanity. She told the story so well, that it became one of the best memoirs I have ever read.
The documentary film "Into The Arms Of Strangers" , winner of the Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 2000, visually enhances this book. Both Lore and her mother Franzi, who lived to the ripe old age of 100, was interviewed for this documentary. It is recommended to everyone interested in this story! In fact, when I closed the book and thought about the review, I sat for long while thinking about this little girl. It encouraged me to read more about the Kindertransport. Watching the documentary had the tears rolling down my face. Everybody simply need to watch it!
An estimated sixty million people died in the deadliest military conflict in history. Which means that 54 million people died during the Second World War, trying to stop Hitler's expansionism and his continuing killing of more than the already 6 million Jewish people. In the same period spanning between 1934 to well into the 1950s, another thirty million Chinese people lost their lives due to starvation under the Mau regime. How can you not cry, thinking about the horror of it all? I was thinking about the parents who have sent their children into battle, including millions of non-Jewish people, who ultimately paid the price for freedom for all. My dad went to the same war, fighting on the British side, and came home a totally different, almost unrecognizable person. I was born many years later and was told his story when I was a young woman.
The book is so well-written, however, it is a pity that there were so many gaps left in it. Some experiences never made a full circle. It was just left hanging. It is neither acceptable in a memoir, nor a novel, IMHO.
For instance: the little girl, who became a strong survivor, had one wish, and that was to make friends, be accepted, understood and loved. Although she did not express love in any form in the book, it is evident in her treatment of the people she cared about. She found it difficult to connect to young men, although she wanted to get married and have children. Some of her colorful, notorious romantic experiences are described in the book. But the man she would ultimately marry just fleetingly graced the tale, without any explanation of how they met, or how the relationship culminated into marriage. Her quest for romance is a sub plot in the story, and creates an expectation with the reader. It was just left hanging sterile out to dry in this particular instance. I haven't read the author's other books, but from reading a biography of her life, it seems as though all her books, written for adults, must be read to get the full picture. Her writing is also influenced by the magic realism which was started by Garcia Marquez. It became the axle of her writing adventures.
The book ends where she is financially barely surviving as a some sort of painter of graphic designs, after working as a receptionist and a filing clerk before that. In a sense there is little evidence of any joie de vivre displayed in the book. A cold, emotionally devoid cynism, intentional or unintentional, winds its way through the entire story. Readers who do not appreciate direct,frank, almost blatant, honesty, will find some of the protagonist's actions offensive. For others, it might be refreshing. I loved it.
The story concludes with a young woman disappearing into mediocrity. It doesn't make sense for a girl who had too much shutzpah to let it happen! But then again, it is based on reality. Personally, I would have preferred the inclusion of her later accomplishments as a teacher at various universities. She won several literary awards. The book could have celebrated the spirit of a survivor and a fighter. It would have validated the little girl who had to survive on her own and made it. The book could have been so much more. However, the title says it all. It was the first phase of a displaced person's life who were forced to become part of the furniture in other people's cultures, beliefs, homes and lives. Therefore, the tale concludes where she ends this period of her life.
The story was well-focused and the economical use of words eliminated any possibility of word-dumping. I still would have loved to know if Lore loved flowers, or became enchanted by a rainbow, or ever bonded with a pet. Was there anything that balanced out the challenges she had to endure? Which positive factors, impressions or experiences completed her persona? Was there just not room for it in the book, or was it absent in her life? Which part of her young life inspired her positively; which memories did she left behind. Did she ever experienced happiness? Which elements of her new adopted country was embraced or appreciated? Was there anything she appreciated in other cultures?
Nevertheless, this was still a magical literary experience. A wonderful, endearing, excellent piece of writing. What a joy!
RECOMMENDED!
This was Lore Segal's first novel and brought her international acclaim.
The book was provided by Open Road Media through Netgalley for review. Thank you very much for this wonderful experience.
October 20, 2024
The writing is full of life and humor, but there is a bit of confusion in this book.
First, it is called a "novel" but then Cynthia Ozick, in her odd foreword that refers to the writer's voice as "dry, cold, literal, even numb," repeatedly calls it "memoirs." Since I made the mistake of reading the foreword (which I suggest you skip until after reading the whole book: not only is offensive given the liveliness of the voice and the exquisite layering of a traumatized character, but it gives away plot), I read the book as a memoir . . . only to have it switch in Part 2 to a story of Lore's uncle, Paul, which could only be written as researched fiction since Lore Segal has no part in Paul's early life in the Dominican Republic as a refugee from Hitler's Germany. Fully confused about what this was, I surmised that it would have been better to call this a book of autobiographical stories, rather than try to force them into a novel form with chapters that don't make chronological sense or in any way make them a novel. But then when Lore arrives in the Dominican Republic in the second chapter of Part 2, it again made sense as a novel.
I loved the first part of the book. Anything but cold, Lore Segal's voice conveys all the ambivalence of a spirited young girl who is who she is, even in circumstances where she is transported out of her home in Vienna as Hitler is taking over, and where she moves from foster home to home (hence, the title) in England.
The chronology confusion in Part 1 is in the sequence of chapters that jump around in time, as if certain facts have not already been fully told. And in Part 2, I sometimes got lost in the first chapter in the mass of people in Paul's life, and I lost interest in working to follow things. This was exacerbated by a recurrent typo in the Kindle version: Paul's wife, Ilse, is repeatedly printed as "Use." (I'm guessing this is the mistake of digital publisher Open Road Media.) And the following chapters were like being trapped in a family that had no life other than chatter.
I think the book, a first novel, could have used one more editor's pass and certainly a proofer's pass, but since it was originally published in 1964 and Ms. Segal has died, that is unlikely.
I loved the last "chapter" when Lore lives in NYC—it resonated personally with me, and was so moving that I'm giving this whole book 4 stars. I love Lore's honesty and humor and pull-no-punches portrayal of herself as an irrepressibly alive and headstrong 10- to 20-year-old in the first half of the book. And I want to read more of her work.
First, it is called a "novel" but then Cynthia Ozick, in her odd foreword that refers to the writer's voice as "dry, cold, literal, even numb," repeatedly calls it "memoirs." Since I made the mistake of reading the foreword (which I suggest you skip until after reading the whole book: not only is offensive given the liveliness of the voice and the exquisite layering of a traumatized character, but it gives away plot), I read the book as a memoir . . . only to have it switch in Part 2 to a story of Lore's uncle, Paul, which could only be written as researched fiction since Lore Segal has no part in Paul's early life in the Dominican Republic as a refugee from Hitler's Germany. Fully confused about what this was, I surmised that it would have been better to call this a book of autobiographical stories, rather than try to force them into a novel form with chapters that don't make chronological sense or in any way make them a novel. But then when Lore arrives in the Dominican Republic in the second chapter of Part 2, it again made sense as a novel.
I loved the first part of the book. Anything but cold, Lore Segal's voice conveys all the ambivalence of a spirited young girl who is who she is, even in circumstances where she is transported out of her home in Vienna as Hitler is taking over, and where she moves from foster home to home (hence, the title) in England.
The chronology confusion in Part 1 is in the sequence of chapters that jump around in time, as if certain facts have not already been fully told. And in Part 2, I sometimes got lost in the first chapter in the mass of people in Paul's life, and I lost interest in working to follow things. This was exacerbated by a recurrent typo in the Kindle version: Paul's wife, Ilse, is repeatedly printed as "Use." (I'm guessing this is the mistake of digital publisher Open Road Media.) And the following chapters were like being trapped in a family that had no life other than chatter.
I think the book, a first novel, could have used one more editor's pass and certainly a proofer's pass, but since it was originally published in 1964 and Ms. Segal has died, that is unlikely.
I loved the last "chapter" when Lore lives in NYC—it resonated personally with me, and was so moving that I'm giving this whole book 4 stars. I love Lore's honesty and humor and pull-no-punches portrayal of herself as an irrepressibly alive and headstrong 10- to 20-year-old in the first half of the book. And I want to read more of her work.
September 3, 2014
Many of the books that I have read about survivors of the Holocaust are about those who somehow survived the dire, heinous conditions of the camps. This is a different story. This is about a young girl whose fate saved her from the camps but yet, as a ten year old girl, experienced the separation from her family and her home in Austria. And while this fate is obviously so much better than having perished in the camps or having to live through the horrors and survive them, this is a story of being displaced, about loss of one’s identity.
Segal calls it a novel but if you read anything about the author's life, you realize that this "novel” is really her story. In the intro by Cynthia Ozick, she talks about the lack emotion with which the story is told. “Over the child’s survival and tenacity hangs a guilty awareness that her life, having been granted, must not be taken for granted. It is undoubtedly, this awareness which gives Segal’s book it’s extraordinary – one might say its peculiar tone. It is dry, sold, literal, even numb.” But it was precisely this tone that evoked emotion in me - the sadness of the story of a little girl separated from her family and her home and moved around for seven years after that.
Lore Segal, a ten year old Jewish girl is put on board the Kinder Transport from Vienna being sent to England by her parents in hopes of being saved from the Nazis who just taken over Austria. Lore is shuffled from her house to her cousin Erwin’s house, to her grandparent’s , to the train and a boat, and then over the next seven years to Hooper’s, the Grimsley’s and other families willing to take in this young refugee. Told in a matter of fact way , without much emotion , the telling makes for a rather chilling story as we see the effects on Lore. Even though her parents were allowed to come to England, they were only able to see their daughter one day a week since they were working as domestics in other houses. The impact of this life on her family is also told.
The part of the story before she goes to college depicts that life of displacement , was more moving to me than the last part of the book when Lore is reunited with her mother, grandparents, and uncle but yet it was a part of Lore’s story.
This was originally published in 1964 and I appreciate that Open Road Integrated Media is republishing this important story.
**********************************************************************************************************************
Thank you to Open Road Integrated Media and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a book I may not have found.
Segal calls it a novel but if you read anything about the author's life, you realize that this "novel” is really her story. In the intro by Cynthia Ozick, she talks about the lack emotion with which the story is told. “Over the child’s survival and tenacity hangs a guilty awareness that her life, having been granted, must not be taken for granted. It is undoubtedly, this awareness which gives Segal’s book it’s extraordinary – one might say its peculiar tone. It is dry, sold, literal, even numb.” But it was precisely this tone that evoked emotion in me - the sadness of the story of a little girl separated from her family and her home and moved around for seven years after that.
Lore Segal, a ten year old Jewish girl is put on board the Kinder Transport from Vienna being sent to England by her parents in hopes of being saved from the Nazis who just taken over Austria. Lore is shuffled from her house to her cousin Erwin’s house, to her grandparent’s , to the train and a boat, and then over the next seven years to Hooper’s, the Grimsley’s and other families willing to take in this young refugee. Told in a matter of fact way , without much emotion , the telling makes for a rather chilling story as we see the effects on Lore. Even though her parents were allowed to come to England, they were only able to see their daughter one day a week since they were working as domestics in other houses. The impact of this life on her family is also told.
The part of the story before she goes to college depicts that life of displacement , was more moving to me than the last part of the book when Lore is reunited with her mother, grandparents, and uncle but yet it was a part of Lore’s story.
This was originally published in 1964 and I appreciate that Open Road Integrated Media is republishing this important story.
**********************************************************************************************************************
Thank you to Open Road Integrated Media and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a book I may not have found.
September 4, 2014
What a whine-fest!
If I were that hateful, selfish and mean, I certainly wouldn't be writing a book and telling the whole world about it.
Her poor, pitiful me attitude got on my last nerve and mostly what I felt while reading this was disgust. She just might be the most ungrateful and disrespectful woman ever born.
If I had ever talked to my Parents and Grandparents in the manner that she does ... well, let's just say that I would have spent my entire childhood bloody and bruised.
And, if I had ever caused my Father bodily harm or callously took away my Grandmother's will to live then I probably would have curled up into a ball and died of shame shortly thereafter.
Unless you like books about spoiled, ungrateful little brats, I suggest you don't waste your time on this one.
If I were that hateful, selfish and mean, I certainly wouldn't be writing a book and telling the whole world about it.
Her poor, pitiful me attitude got on my last nerve and mostly what I felt while reading this was disgust. She just might be the most ungrateful and disrespectful woman ever born.
If I had ever talked to my Parents and Grandparents in the manner that she does ... well, let's just say that I would have spent my entire childhood bloody and bruised.
And, if I had ever caused my Father bodily harm or callously took away my Grandmother's will to live then I probably would have curled up into a ball and died of shame shortly thereafter.
Unless you like books about spoiled, ungrateful little brats, I suggest you don't waste your time on this one.
January 21, 2020
This is an absorbing story beautifully written. I am a bit puzzled as to why the author chose to call it a novel when it seems clear from her Preface that it is a memoir. A very intelligent little girl from an educated, well-to-do Viennese family celebrates her tenth birthday in March 1938 just before the Anschluss. Shortly thereafter she is one of several hundred Austrian-Jewish children to participate in the Children's Transport to carry them to safety. Lore arrives in Dover, England and is looked after by the English refugee committee who found foster homes for the children. This is not a Holocaust story, but it is one of alienation and displacement, of relief at being safe and guilt at being a survivor, years of not belonging but yearning for a place. The author's voice is laconic and unemotional which renders her story even more powerful.
December 14, 2013
She is one of my new favorite novelists.
November 15, 2024
I guess this is what is called auto fiction these days. Although it is a novel, it closely tracks the author's experience being sent to England by herself as a child as the Nazis closed in on Austria. Her parents, grandparents and uncle follow, eventually moving to a Caribbean island and then on to New York. I found the first half of the book, which related her experiences living with foster families in England, more interesting than the second half, which focuses on her relatives. She was a very compelling writer.
October 1, 2014
I probably am in the minority in giving this 3 stars. It is the story of a girl that could have easily ended up in camps but was saved by staying with families in England. It is told in such a matter of fact way that it appears to me almost ungrateful. I did not find this story to be sentimental or powerful. Good story but I thought there were parts that could have been explored more and less of others.
July 10, 2019
Even though this book was published more than 50 years ago, Lore Segal's autobiographical novel is a story about refugee children that still resonates today. When the United Kingdom took in over 10,000 children, mostly Jewish, from Germany, Austria and other east European countries, and placed them in the care of foster families, Segal was part of the Kindertransports.
Speaking through her narrator, this is the story of a 10-year-old girl who, with other children, was put on a train and transported to England to be safe and secure after Hitler annexed Austria in 1938. Seen through the eyes of a child, but conveyed through the almost clincal voice of an adult, this young girl observes the customs, ways of life and class-consciousness of the families in whose homes she temporarily lives. Although safe from privation and death, as a child she was uprooted from her parents, family, community, country and language. Placed in numerous foster homes, Jewish and gentile, Lore Segal portrays first-hand knowledge, experience and emotion about what it is like for a young child to learn another language, adjust to various new families, and also be responsible for seeking the extrication of her parents from another country, Austria, under the dictatorship of one of modern history's most demonic rulers. The young girl is scared, curious, observant and displays a wry sense of humor. She submerges a good deal of emotion so as to show her appreciation for being taken in, and does her best to behave and be a good child.
When the book was first published in 1964, there were reviews that commented about how cold the protagonist was. However, as time passed fresh views of this book elicited a new perspective. This "coldness" is the price that is paid for any childhood that is interrupted, when responsibility for others weighs heavily on small shoulders, and frightened children do not have the fortitude and resilience to see beyond the overwhelming and intimidating present.
Lore Segal had an inner core of strength that she did not know about, and in the cold bleak English winter of 1938, she wrote a letter, one that she says, " ... was a tearjerker full of symbolisms ... " and found its way to a refugee committee, and got her parents visas to England. The letter secured her parents lives, but it also was her tender roots as a writer.
Reviewed by Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Central Library
Speaking through her narrator, this is the story of a 10-year-old girl who, with other children, was put on a train and transported to England to be safe and secure after Hitler annexed Austria in 1938. Seen through the eyes of a child, but conveyed through the almost clincal voice of an adult, this young girl observes the customs, ways of life and class-consciousness of the families in whose homes she temporarily lives. Although safe from privation and death, as a child she was uprooted from her parents, family, community, country and language. Placed in numerous foster homes, Jewish and gentile, Lore Segal portrays first-hand knowledge, experience and emotion about what it is like for a young child to learn another language, adjust to various new families, and also be responsible for seeking the extrication of her parents from another country, Austria, under the dictatorship of one of modern history's most demonic rulers. The young girl is scared, curious, observant and displays a wry sense of humor. She submerges a good deal of emotion so as to show her appreciation for being taken in, and does her best to behave and be a good child.
When the book was first published in 1964, there were reviews that commented about how cold the protagonist was. However, as time passed fresh views of this book elicited a new perspective. This "coldness" is the price that is paid for any childhood that is interrupted, when responsibility for others weighs heavily on small shoulders, and frightened children do not have the fortitude and resilience to see beyond the overwhelming and intimidating present.
Lore Segal had an inner core of strength that she did not know about, and in the cold bleak English winter of 1938, she wrote a letter, one that she says, " ... was a tearjerker full of symbolisms ... " and found its way to a refugee committee, and got her parents visas to England. The letter secured her parents lives, but it also was her tender roots as a writer.
Reviewed by Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Central Library
January 19, 2021
I thought there was nothing new to say about WWII or the Holocaust, but decided to read this book after hearing a review on the NYT book review podcast. Other People's Houses is an excellent book. Lore Segal was ten years old when her parents put her on the first Kindertransport to London and eventually her parents were allowed to leave Vienna as well. She lives in a succession of foster homes and her parents live separately as domestics in upper class English homes. It will be many years before she has a home of her own. Segal's powers of observation and recall of the circumstances of her life,the people in it, and her own emotions are impressive. "Cut yourself off, at ten years, from feelings that can't otherwise be mastered, and it takes decades to become reattached."
In the introduction Cynthia Ozick explains Segal's achievement: "that in our time, in the face of everything that happened to those Others, we must question the legitimacy of our very lives; and that we are, at bottom, through the simple fact of our survival, human contraband which history, for one reason or another, has allowed to get through."
Lore Segal is featured in the documentary "Into the Arms of Strangers," which tells the story of the kindertransport. The film is a wonderful companion to this book.
In the introduction Cynthia Ozick explains Segal's achievement: "that in our time, in the face of everything that happened to those Others, we must question the legitimacy of our very lives; and that we are, at bottom, through the simple fact of our survival, human contraband which history, for one reason or another, has allowed to get through."
Lore Segal is featured in the documentary "Into the Arms of Strangers," which tells the story of the kindertransport. The film is a wonderful companion to this book.
December 10, 2024
I believe that critical readers might find reasons not to assign a top rating to this first novel of Lore Segal’s. Perhaps I’m less a critical reader than one who just finds a book I love being lost in the pages of and goes with that joy and discovery. I have found Segal rather late - a few days after her death, in fact (2 months ago) - and fallen in love. I’ve read, counting this, four of her books in these last months of 2024, and I will immediately look for another. I love her voice, her story, her humor.
It adds that I’ve been fiercely drawn to stories, history of World War II and have close friends who are Jewish, including a first childhood friend whose family moved to our neighborhood when her father, an imminent ceramics chemist in Germany, moved to join my father’s company in the early 1940’s, the successful factory of his brother and himself having been taken by Nazis.
About Segal’s style, I find it so easy, comfortable - like settling into a very interesting conversation. Down to earth while also punctuated with lyrical description, emotional clarity and fine details. I will be recommending this to my book club.
It adds that I’ve been fiercely drawn to stories, history of World War II and have close friends who are Jewish, including a first childhood friend whose family moved to our neighborhood when her father, an imminent ceramics chemist in Germany, moved to join my father’s company in the early 1940’s, the successful factory of his brother and himself having been taken by Nazis.
About Segal’s style, I find it so easy, comfortable - like settling into a very interesting conversation. Down to earth while also punctuated with lyrical description, emotional clarity and fine details. I will be recommending this to my book club.
October 13, 2025
Although this is written as fiction I think it is probably as close to an autobiography as you can get - just with some names and specific contexts changed (in the copy I read this is explained at the end of the book). It’s written fairly simply (although not badly) and with few embellishments which detracted from the story a bit for me, but it’s still well worth the read to understand what the life of a child who made it on to a kindertransport was actually like when they arrived in Britain, as well as that of her parents who manage to make it here not long afterwards. Lore is not always the most endearing narrator but it’s interesting to see how she integrates and adapts to her new life, as well as gain an insight into the behaviour of the families that took her and her parents in. It’s less literary than I was expecting but if you have any interest in human stories from the Second World War then this is definitely worth reading as it’s a perspective that I have rarely come across.
January 19, 2021
This is a very touching fictionalised memoir which provides an impressive insight into the mind of a Kindertransport child. Lore is eventually reunited with her parents but they are unable to live together and she spends formative years of her life moving between foster homes. We see the hospitality extended to refugees from her perspective, the uncritical descriptions of the behaviour of their hosts telling the reader a great deal about the social mores of England at that time. The book was originally published in 1964 and this recent edition includes an afterword by the author explaining why she wrote her autobiography as a novel and with some perceptive thoughts about history and memory.
February 16, 2025
A searing recreation of a childhood of dislocation and loss. The story is told (mostly) from the child's pov (from age 10 up into her 20s), but always with honesty and lack of sentimentality. Segal was a kindertransport child, living the war years and beyond in England; then in the Dominican Republic; and finally in America. Coincidentally, her year of birth (1928) and her year of death (2024) are the same as my mother's.
September 2, 2025
Ik twijfel tussen drie en vier sterren. Het verhaal gaat over een levendig tienjarig meisje uit een gegoed Weens gezin, dat meegaat met het eerste kindertransport naar Engeland, in 1938.
Het is voor mij een stukje onbekende geschiedenis, hoe de Engelsen de Joodse vluchtelingen opnamen en hoe die vervolgens hun weg moesten zien te vinden, vaak als goedkope arbeidskrachten in baantjes ver beneden stand en capaciteiten. Alleen al daarom is het boek waardevol. Het is ook goed geschreven. Maar uiteindelijk is de ontwikkeling van de hoofdpersoon nogal vlak, en dat is jammer.
Het is voor mij een stukje onbekende geschiedenis, hoe de Engelsen de Joodse vluchtelingen opnamen en hoe die vervolgens hun weg moesten zien te vinden, vaak als goedkope arbeidskrachten in baantjes ver beneden stand en capaciteiten. Alleen al daarom is het boek waardevol. Het is ook goed geschreven. Maar uiteindelijk is de ontwikkeling van de hoofdpersoon nogal vlak, en dat is jammer.
September 29, 2018
Wonderfully written, really interesting account of traveling to England on the Kindertransport, beautifully told from the unique perspective of a child. The Second World War brought right down to a level on which it impacted on a an individual, and a little bit through her eyes of others around her.
April 28, 2023
I kept reading this book hoping that there would be some substance to it. Hopefully the semi autobiographical part was not her true personality. I couldn’t bring myself to like Lore at all there was no humanity no relatability. It was hard to follow because the timeline blipped around and some incidents repeated. I was lured in by the WW2 theme which was bypassed. It was a waste of my time, sorry
December 20, 2024
I don’t understand the partial fictionalization of her story for the sake of conveying her story. It seems counterproductive to the point of sharing her story as a critical part of history leading up to the Holocaust.
April 29, 2023
the five page afterword was better written than the entire rest of the book
May 21, 2024
In het Nederlands gelezen. Wat ik indrukwekkend vond, zo schrijnend, was de verhouding van het kind tot haar weldoeners en haar zieke, ongelukkige vader. De hoofdpersoon loopt bepaald niet over van dankbaarheid en barst van ambitie. De laatste hoofdstukken, waarin duidelijk wordt dat ze de nodige scheurtjes en barstjes heeft opgelopen in de jaren dat ze van huis naar huis ging, boeiden me minder. Weer een nieuwe omgeving, de universiteit, weer nieuwe mensen. Dan gaat het me storen dat ik de hoofdpersoon niet sympathiek vind.
October 5, 2021
El documental INTO THE ARMS OF STRANGERS : STORIES OF THE KINDERTRANSPORT del director Mark Jonathan Harris en la documentació del qual hi treballà l'autora, li possibilita aquesta reflexió :
"(...) la niña documentada por la fotografía entre esa multitud de niños es el hecho, es la verdad que ha sido borrada por mi recuerdo (...) Creo que no hay ninguna forma de recordar, ninguna forma de contar, que no sea, en cierto modo, fatal para el hecho recordado.
¿Què fue lo que realmente sucedió? (pàg 257)
És l'any 1938 l'annexió d'Àustria és un fet. Lore Segal tenia 10 anys i era jueva. Va formar part del transport de criatures que acolliren famílies britàniques, altres no tingueren tanta sort amb l'esclat de la guerra.
Lore Segal retroba la nena que fou i la segueix en el seu trànsit adolescent per acabar repensant-la des del temps de l'escriptura del llibre (1964).
Quan la persecució del jueus pels nazis era ja un fet i la por entrava i s'instal·lava a les cases, Dolf, amic poeta del tiet de Lore Segal, li deixà escrits aquests versos en la seva llibreta d'autògrafs:
" Querida niña,
nos siguen, desde el primer llanto en la cuna,
el odio y la mentira, hasta la tumba.
De la cuna al descanso final
el sufrimiento de los hombres nos acompañará.
Sé auténtica y trata de ayudar.
Seguro que lo entenderás,
y no porque la vida te trate mal:
por ti misma, espero, lo harás. ". (pàg 22)
"(...) la niña documentada por la fotografía entre esa multitud de niños es el hecho, es la verdad que ha sido borrada por mi recuerdo (...) Creo que no hay ninguna forma de recordar, ninguna forma de contar, que no sea, en cierto modo, fatal para el hecho recordado.
¿Què fue lo que realmente sucedió? (pàg 257)
És l'any 1938 l'annexió d'Àustria és un fet. Lore Segal tenia 10 anys i era jueva. Va formar part del transport de criatures que acolliren famílies britàniques, altres no tingueren tanta sort amb l'esclat de la guerra.
Lore Segal retroba la nena que fou i la segueix en el seu trànsit adolescent per acabar repensant-la des del temps de l'escriptura del llibre (1964).
Quan la persecució del jueus pels nazis era ja un fet i la por entrava i s'instal·lava a les cases, Dolf, amic poeta del tiet de Lore Segal, li deixà escrits aquests versos en la seva llibreta d'autògrafs:
" Querida niña,
nos siguen, desde el primer llanto en la cuna,
el odio y la mentira, hasta la tumba.
De la cuna al descanso final
el sufrimiento de los hombres nos acompañará.
Sé auténtica y trata de ayudar.
Seguro que lo entenderás,
y no porque la vida te trate mal:
por ti misma, espero, lo harás. ". (pàg 22)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 27, 2010
This book went on far too long; it really should have ended when the war did, or at least when the author left England for the Dominican Republic. Instead it continued for like 125 pages more, with stories of teaching English, conflicts with the author's mother, encounters with other expatriates, etc etc etc. And on top of that, the book ends very abruptly, basically: "So my grandma died and I got married to this one dude I haven't mentioned before now, and we have a couple of kids. The End." Lore Segal sounds like an immensely ordinary woman who, Kindertransport aside, lead an immensely ordinary (and therefore boring) life.
May 1, 2010
I first learned of Lore Segal when I watched the documentary DVD, "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport". This book expands on her family's flight
from Austria by way of Paris, England, Dominican Republic.
There are many gaps in information and jumps in chronology and then there is her mother's ever present influence.
from Austria by way of Paris, England, Dominican Republic.
There are many gaps in information and jumps in chronology and then there is her mother's ever present influence.
January 4, 2015
Sophisticated prose; stark and not sentimental.
March 18, 2023
This book was interesting to me because the main character/author (from what I gathered, this is somewhat autobiographical?) was so unlikeable. I almost gave up reading after the first three chapters because I could not sympathize with how she was acting at all. After reading autobiographies like The Diary of Anne Frank and Night, it was a really different perspective. Almost all of her immediate family survives and does not go to any camps, but when her family arrives in England, she treats them with such disdain. I could not stand the main character in the beginning, but now that I am reflecting, I think that it was the point. Everyone is affected differently by generational trauma and firsthand experience, and her story is just as valid as Anne Frank's or Ellie Wiesel's.One of my main complaints about the actual book was that I found that the story jumped so much from one era of life to the next that it was confusing to read. Starting when she started to live in Santiago, I just could not understand what was happening. When she gets to the later part of her life, she skips like 50 years after going into painstaking detail for the first 26 years of her life. After detailing so much about her love life, we find out she is married in one sentence. Really odd pacing towards the end that made it difficult to read. Despite some of the more technical critiques I have, stories like these are incredibly important to tell, and I'm glad Lore Segal took the time to write this book (loosely?) about her experience.
January 16, 2021
This autobiographical fiction traces the author's journey through the Austrian Holocaust, the first Kindertransport of 1938, ten years growing up in England "in care" and reuniting with her parents and extended family in England, the Dominican Republic and New York City. Sensitive, observant and sharp-tongued, her discomfort everywhere, her complex of ambition, guilt, and longing, is presented with poignance and wry humor.
"I stood in the center of my circle of relatives, nodding solemnly. I said I would write letters to everybody and I would tell the Englånder about everything that was happening and would get sponsors for my parents and my grandparents and for everybody. 'Well, well,' my aunt said. 'She certainly can talk, can't she!'" p. 28
"I saw where,...a single bright-red rosebud wearing a clump of freshly fallen snow, like a cap askew....I would write it in a letter....that the Jews of Austria were like roses left over in the winter of Nazi Occupation. ..How true and how sad! They would say, 'And she is only ten years old!' ....I hopped onto the edge of the bed, and hampered by coat and gloves, with freezing ears, plunged with a kind of greedy glee into writing." p.41
"I stood in the center of my circle of relatives, nodding solemnly. I said I would write letters to everybody and I would tell the Englånder about everything that was happening and would get sponsors for my parents and my grandparents and for everybody. 'Well, well,' my aunt said. 'She certainly can talk, can't she!'" p. 28
"I saw where,...a single bright-red rosebud wearing a clump of freshly fallen snow, like a cap askew....I would write it in a letter....that the Jews of Austria were like roses left over in the winter of Nazi Occupation. ..How true and how sad! They would say, 'And she is only ten years old!' ....I hopped onto the edge of the bed, and hampered by coat and gloves, with freezing ears, plunged with a kind of greedy glee into writing." p.41
January 12, 2021
Author Lore Segal calls this a fictional memoir, but it rings so true that I suspect that it's pretty light on the fiction. It depicts her wartime experiences, beginning when she is a child of 10 who is hastily separated from her well-to-do Viennese family and sent to England on the Kindertransport. The book follows her difficult and strange journey, as she is moved from pillar to post, and housed in a variety of foster homes. Some people found Segal's narrator and cold and selfish character, but I think the style captures a perfectly understandable human reaction to trauma and forced separation; she's a shell-shocked child surviving her isolated and demeaning circumstances from behind her own defensive walls. This doesn't go into detail about the atrocities committed by the Nazis, which are ominously in the background, but instead enlightened me about whole new set of experiences from this period of history that I hadn't considered: where did the 'lucky' refugees go to, and how did they fit into a society so different from their own? I found it fascinating and heartbreaking imagining young Lore's life.
April 18, 2020
Segal must have been very brave to write this autobiography of herself during WWII, because she does not come across as a very appealing character. Lore was extremely lucky to be placed on the Kindertransport to England and then be joined by her parents a year later. Yet she mostly comes off as ungrateful to her host families. I can only account for it due to her immaturity and shock of being separated from her biological family. Yes her parents had to come down in social status working as house servants. But they lived to tell the tale. I am amazed at the selflessness of the British people who took in these refugees when they had many problems of their own.
And yes her extended family escaped the Holocaust by immigrating to the Dominican Republic. The refugee farm cooperatives under Trujillo was a chapter of history that I knew nothing about.
The heroine of the story is Lore's mother Franzi, who suffers and accomodates to all hardships with good humor. The anti-hero is her grandmother who never missed an opportunity to complain and criticize.
And yes her extended family escaped the Holocaust by immigrating to the Dominican Republic. The refugee farm cooperatives under Trujillo was a chapter of history that I knew nothing about.
The heroine of the story is Lore's mother Franzi, who suffers and accomodates to all hardships with good humor. The anti-hero is her grandmother who never missed an opportunity to complain and criticize.
July 26, 2025
Ik had hoge verwachtingen van dit boek, maar het viel me een beetje tegen. De schrijfstijl van Mevr. Segal ligt mij niet zo, denk ik.
Het onderwerp is wel interessant dus heb ik het netjes uitgelezen.
Lore is een jong Joods in Oostenrijk wonend meisje tijdens de opkomt van Hitler. Haar ouders regelen voor haar dat ze mee mag op een van de eerste kindertransporten waarmee ze uiteindelijk bij verschillende families in Engeland wordt ondergebracht. Lore is een vreemd kind. Ze heeft zo haar eigen opvattingen en dat botst best vaak met de pleegouders. Zodat ze telkens van gezin naar gezin gaat. Haar ouders volgen haar redelijk snel en krijgen werk en onderdak door als huishoudster en butler aan de slag te gaan. In feite horen zij ook bij de gegoede klasse toen ze nog in Oostenrijk woonden, maar om aan geld te komen, moeten ze wel werk doen dat ze niet gewend zijn. Lore's vader is nogal ziekelijk en spreekt geen woord Engels. Lore en haar moeder doen dat wel.
Het verhaal volgt Lore van haar tiende tot eind tienerjaren.
Het onderwerp is wel interessant dus heb ik het netjes uitgelezen.
Lore is een jong Joods in Oostenrijk wonend meisje tijdens de opkomt van Hitler. Haar ouders regelen voor haar dat ze mee mag op een van de eerste kindertransporten waarmee ze uiteindelijk bij verschillende families in Engeland wordt ondergebracht. Lore is een vreemd kind. Ze heeft zo haar eigen opvattingen en dat botst best vaak met de pleegouders. Zodat ze telkens van gezin naar gezin gaat. Haar ouders volgen haar redelijk snel en krijgen werk en onderdak door als huishoudster en butler aan de slag te gaan. In feite horen zij ook bij de gegoede klasse toen ze nog in Oostenrijk woonden, maar om aan geld te komen, moeten ze wel werk doen dat ze niet gewend zijn. Lore's vader is nogal ziekelijk en spreekt geen woord Engels. Lore en haar moeder doen dat wel.
Het verhaal volgt Lore van haar tiende tot eind tienerjaren.
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