Review

Almonds and Raisins

by Maisie Mosco The first book in this 5-book saga is Almonds and Raisins, and begins with the arrival of the Sandberg family to a new life in England, having fled the Russian pogroms. Their arduous journey from their hometown has been long, difficult and culminating in a nauseous sea journey with many families in a similar situation crammed into a crowded hold.

Once in England they make their way to Manchester, uncertain of where they would stay, relying on the hospitality of others who have escaped the same threat and already settled. On their arrival, they are welcomed, but the accommodation is by no means spacious and certainly does not measure up to what they have left behind. As was the experience of all who had to make this journey, the belongings they have brought with them are minimal. The place they find themselves in is a far cry from Dvinsk where they had previously lived. On researching I found that Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia) was one of the leading Jewish cities of the Russian Empire and a centre of high Jewish culture and debate.

The Sandburg’s comprise Sarah and Abraham and their children David, Sammy and Esther (Nathan would be born later). The first few chapters of this book cover Abraham’s eventually finding a job pressing garments in a Jewish sweat shop, and in due course the family being able to move into their own home. Their lives revolve around the close-knit Jewish community and the Orthodox Shul, which initially is a small room in the Rabbi’s house. David, the eldest boy, carries the burden with him that he was unable to protect Sammy from the Cossack horseman who had cruelly ridden over his leg crushing it and leaving him with a lifelong limp.

The Sandberg’s lives become intertwined with their neighbours, the Moritz family, who have fled Austria.

Sarah is the Matriarch of the family, striving for the best and making them take the decisions which would see them climbing the social ladder. This includes making the right choice of wife or husband, not based on love but on financial or societal benefit. Sarah is determined that her children will not suffer the deprivation she has endured.

These stringent rules cause some pain, jealousy and fragmentation in the first-generation family and continue to do so as successive generations are born.

As the series of books continue there is a real spectrum of how Sarah’s descendants respond to their Jewish heritage. Some become very strict (even relocating to the emerging state of Israel); some ‘marry out’ having families with conflicting religious loyalties. Ultimately her descendants include a member of the aristocracy and a member of Parliament raised to the peerage. But there are also those who have struggled with their sexuality and many who have regretted that they had done what was expected rather than what they themselves desired.

These books, especially the earlier ones, do use a lot of Yiddish words, but reading the Kindle version, gives the opportunity to highlight and look-up unfamiliar words.

Having previously lived in an area with a significant Jewish population and having several Jewish friends I am interested in Jewish culture and recent history, so I found this family saga fascinating and very enjoyable to read.

The other books in this series are Scattered Seed; Children’s Children; Out of the Ashes and New Beginnings. Tess Maddin

Maisie Mosco

Famous Last Words: A Novel

Timothy Findley A longstanding family Christmas Day tradition – participating in the Queen’s Broadcast to her subjects at home and abroad, followed by an afternoon stroll to reflect on her words and marvel at the work stamina of this 94-year-old woman – led this old Republican (of the Irish Republican as opposed to the Trumpian Republican variety) to reread this fantastic novel.

It arose when, on Christmas afternoon, Covidmasked and reflecting on the Broadcast, I crossed paths with a similarly masked old sparring partner. After socially distanced seasonal greetings, and following the meander of our usual good-natured hard-fought friendly disputes – which are always about politics since that subject concerns matters of everyday importance to everyone – we moved on from comments related to Brexit and the potential consequences of the recent trade deal to discussing the values and influence of the Royal family, and their role and actions in the 1930s.

Some days later, musing on these discussions – and as Covid restrictions worsened for Melbourn and everywhere else – I took down and read again this wonderful novel.

First published in 1981 in Canada, the novel is beautifully written and very easy to read. The author, Timothy Findley, was a Canadian writer, who died in 2002 cloaked with national and international awards and honours for his creative output. The Observer described him as “Canada’s greatest living writer”

If you have read and enjoyed Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel ‘The Remains of the Day’ (which appeared later in 1989 and won the Booker Prize), or have seen its highly regarded film adaptation, with its fabulous period setting, dialogue and tremendous performances from Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson and a very young Hugh Grant, then this book is for you.

Both these great writers, Ishiguro and Findley, were clearly at that time ploughing in the same fertile field. The central focus of Findley, however, is not Ishiguro’s loyal and lowly butler witnessing his master’s crucial role in Establishment scheming throughout the 1930s to advance Nazi ideology and assist Nazi supporters and sympathisers into power in Britain. Rather, Findley’s unrelenting focus is on the clandestine lives of the high society public elites in that unfolding drama, the persons and personalities at the pinnacle of politics and in the area of creative cultural endeavour, who throughout that time mixed and mingled freely across the principal European countries involved.

The several central figures he wonderfully draws and presents are those who performed the main roles in that long drawn out drama: Wallis Simpson, Edward Windsor and their supporters in joint alliance with the Nazi cause; those directing the several secret intelligence agencies of Britain and Germany; and, as always, the cultural writers and opinion formers principally represented by the Europe-based American journalist, speaker and writer Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.

The insights and quality of writing Findley brings to

Timothy Findley bear on the issues and themes make it a memorable book. He locates the trauma and drama of 1930s Europe in the ill-fated settlement drawn up by the victors at the end of the 1914–18 World War. Across the pages, armies are mobilised and total war is waged. Havoc, death and destruction are wrought throughout the countries of Europe, borders shift, alliances are made and broken and all of these muddled, overlapping, confusing and contradictory events and impulses – including those of the greatly privileged principal individual actors – are set down and clearly delineated in prose that is a joy to read. You will stop to savour and absorb before immediately starting forth again.

Forwards and backwards across the timeline Findley ranges, in full control of his material and of us his readers. From the opening sections, with Mauberley fleeing Italy as the Nazi war effort collapses before the Allied advance, to the finale, reached after many breathtaking twists and turns, with Edward, accompanied by Wallis, serving Britain – very reluctantly it should be emphasised – as Governor of the Bahamas.

Throughout the novel Findley grants the reader access to this real-time world – usually inaccessible to all but its hugely privileged and fabulously wealthy members, with their mix of motivations, ambitions and actions – whose impact has endured to this day. The opening sections will draw you in: writer Mauberley escaping the fall of Italy with the handwritten notes, journals and diaries detailing what he had witnessed and recorded as a willing participant in support of the Nazi cause during those tumultuous years of European intrigue and conflict. Then his epiphany, as he determines to reveal to the emerging new world the historic truth of what happened, and the subsequent discovery of his written legacy by a group of American soldiers who realize its significance. On turning the final page, you will emerge deeply impressed and, perhaps, changed. Why else but for that possibility do we read novels? Hugh Pollock