I was looking for something powerful, something meaningful, and my friend Devorah told me I had to read To Vanquish the Dragon. That was way back in June. I had been carrying it around ever since, thinking, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it soon.” I really did want to read it, but once I actually had it in my hands, I wasn’t exactly eager to delve into a Holocaust narrative. When it comes to Holocaust books, after The Diary of Anne Frank and Number the Stars readers move on to Eli Weisel’s Night and then get stuck. Children’s book seems “safe” when dealing with such a difficult and intense topic. In this regard, To Vanquish the Dragon is a very special book.

The book is told through the eyes of Pearl Benisch. She was in her late teens during World War II, and she came from an upper class, well educated, religious Jewish family. She describes her experiences from the invasion of Poland to her time in the Displaced Persons camps after the war. She was placed in a variety of camps, from the early work camps to Auschwitz itself, which makes her narrative a whole, complete one. Her focus is on the special young women who were her friends, students, teachers and mentors before the War broke out. She and her friends came from the Beth Jacob Girls Schools, which was an educational movement in the Jewish world just reaching maturity when World War II broke out.

These Beth Jacob girls were taught to care for one another, to have faith in G-d, and to dedicate themselves to helping their community. It is because of this focus that the author is able to share her experiences, and it gives the book a focus that helps the reader make their way through the immense tragedy and tiny triumphs the author experiences. Mrs. Benisch is sharing her experience to tell the stories of those who were lost and those who made survival possible, and this helps the reader continue on through the intense narrative.

This book does not gloss over, nor is it overly graphic. There are some miracles, and while small, they are triumphant. And there is of course senseless tragedy. There are parts of it that seem to become overly detailed and sometimes the author goes on tangents about various people, but it reads like someone telling you a story. You accept the tangents because you know there is something very important in the message. To Vanquish the Dragon is a very special book that bears witness to moments that marked those that experienced them for life. For anyone who wants to understand more about the Holocaust, it is a must read.

Grade: A

There are those books that sit on your shelf for ages, and you don’t remember where you got it, or if you bought it yourself, why. These books can sit for years maybe, before you even touch them, just sitting there patiently, waiting to be read. Sometimes, you read them, and they are like finding twenty dollars in your pocket, in other words, they are a pleasant surprise. And sometimes, they are like driving along the highway merrily when you realize you are speeding and the cop had been following you for about ten minutes. In other words, reading it is a sinking feeling that can only end in misery. Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon was the latter for me.

Kavalier and Clay had many elements I should have loved. It had strong Jewish themes, comics, historical setting, and very complex characters. Yet, somehow, it was like never being able to take a few steps back from an impressionist painting. It was just a big old mess.

The story takes place between 1939 and sometime during the McCarthy era, so a span of about 25 years. The main characters are two cousins. Josef Kavalier is a German Jewish refugee who escapes the Nazis but suffers from the guilt that his family is stuck in Europe. Sam Clayman is a street smart New York Jew looking to make a name for himself in the fledgling comics industry. The story explores the relationship between the two cousins, the inner demons they battle on a daily basis, and follows them through a variety of exploits in life, love and politics.

The book is considered the magnum opus of Michael Chabon (who also wrote the Yiddish Policeman’s Union and Wonder Boys among other things). If by magnum opus, they mean the size of the book, which checks in at around 700 pages, then I agree, but as for genius…maybe the definition is relative. 19th century author Henry James writes in his famous essay about the novel “The Art of Fiction,” that a writer who thinks himself an artist and tries to create art instead of a novel, is doing himself an injustice. I fancy this maybe the reason Chabon failed in this novel. This novel is obviously meant to be something greater than the story it is trying to tell, and that pretentiousness drips onto every page.

I recommend this book only for those who fancy themselves intellects with a higher understanding of the arts, or for those who must read every Pulitzer Prize winner or new bestseller. This is obviously a book for those who are much more in “the know” than I am.

Grade: D

Sometimes I get downright desperate for books. I have a difficult time reading most contemporary literature. But as I see one could become jaded by reading only books from before the 1960s, I try to follow the advice, I think from C.S. Lewis, that says you should read one classic, then one contemporary book. As a book snob, I find it difficult to trust in contemporary literature, so when I wander in the book store on the hunt for something newer, I find myself baffled at my choices. This is how I stumbled across The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein. Desperate for something new to read, it was a $5 special at Target. How could I turn it down when I needed a book and was shopping on a budget?

The Invisible Wall (subtitled A Love Story that Broke Barriers) is the tale of a lower class Jewish family who live in a poorer neighborhood in Manchester during World War I. An auto-biographical tale, it is told through the eyes of a young boy named Harry who watches his sister Lily attempt to create a life with her Christian beaux Arthur. Their neighborhood is divided, Christian from Jewish, by an invisible wall down the middle of their street. Lily and Arthur dare to cross that wall.

I found the family life of the Bernstein family much more compelling than that of Lily and Arthur, quite frankly. Their absent father is a drunk, their poor bedraggled mother struggles to make ends meet, and the five children struggle to stand out and be noticed as unique. They each try to break out of the cycle of poverty that has trapped their neighbors and parents. The author becomes so focused on this tale, he neglects the love story, the supposed focus, until two-thirds of the way through the book.

The love story itself is not very compelling, and a conflicting tale. While the author tries to promote Lily and Arthur’s love as beautiful, it reads like a tragic assimilation tale, ending well for no one. This book is a cheap attempt at Angela’s Ashes, but is not quite of the same caliber.

Grade: C

I love the Civil War. I mean, to be honest, I love history in general, but I really love the Civil War. This could be because I’m Southern bred, and like all good Southerners, the Civil War is a part of our DNA, like sweet iced tea or fried chicken. And any other Southerner who tries to tell you this is just a stereotype, like our supposed love of Nascar, is simply a self-loathing Southerner (probably living in California or New York by choice).  So when I discovered All Other Nights sitting on the coffee table of my friend’s parents, with a picture of the Rebel flag waving behind a tragic looking young couple, I of course picked it up. Yes, I am that person who peruses the books on your shelf and coffee table and judges you by what I find there. At least now you are forewarned.

All Other Nights was a fatal attraction for me. It’s the story of Jacob Rappaport, a young Jewish soldier in the Union Army who is given two impossible missions in quick succession. First, he must assisinate his uncle, a known spy, then he must woo and marry Eugenia Levy, a Jewish Southerner also thought to be a spy. This is the story of worlds divided by nothing more than the Mason-Dixon line, and the incredible loyalties such a line created, and in doing so, the worlds it destroyed.

Right, so between the Jewish angle and the Civil War angle, this book was getting bought, didn’t matter if James Patterson wrote the thing. Needless to say, the book had serious expectations to live up to.

The characters were interesting, because they were so deeply flawed. The main character, Jacob, is hard to sympathize with, until you remember he really is only nineteen, and he really thinks he doesn’t have a choice. He thinks he has to do whatever his superiors tell him, and this is his tragic flaw. Eugenia isn’t even as interesting as some of the other secondary characters Horn sets up, such as a war widow and the father of a spy ring, both of whom steal their respective scenes. The history of Jews in the Confederacy and Jews during the Civil War is fascinating (did you know that the 2^nd in command of the Confederacy was Jewish man named Judah Benjamin?). Unfortunately for the book, the plot gets weighed down by espionage, Jacob’s self-loathing, and too much coincidence (which is slightly more believable if you know how Jewish geography works).

Overall, the book was an interesting read, and the flawed characters enhance the tragic scene set by the fact readers know how the Civil War ends. The Southern Civil War buff in me was not terrible disappointed, but the ending did leave something to be desired.

Grade: B-