Aegis 2011
92
Book Review >>> Becky Woodruff
Great House Nicole Krauss. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. 289 pp.
Upon my introduction to Nicole Krauss’ Great House, I was told that it is a novel about a desk. It was not a particularly rousing endorsement, but the accompanying summary was enough to pique my interest. As it turns out, Krauss uses this desk, a hulking presence in the lives of each of the characters, as a tool for conveying the loss, failure, isolation, fixation, and madness of those who encounter it. The desk also demonstrates the excess of worth that people often place in material objects. The novel is told from several points of view including that of a disenchanted writer, a remorseful father, a doubting husband, an observant outsider, and an obsessed antique dealer. Most of these characters are complete strangers to one another, yet the desk means something vital to each of them, playing a distinct role in their individual lives. It is difficult to adequately summarize as complex a tale as Great House. The novel raises more questions than it answers. The many plotlines interweave, creating a somewhat disjointed picture that the reader must piece together along the way. Given particular attention is the disenchanted writer, Nadia, who retains possession of the desk following the death of its former owner. When she must part with it, she faces not only the loss of her muse but the loss of her faith in her writing and in herself. Other characters face similar existential dilemmas and considerable losses. Weisz, a survivor of the Holocaust, obsesses over the reconstruction of his childhood home, which was looted and destroyed by the Nazis. He grows up to be an antique dealer and spends his entire life seeking out each piece of furniture that was lost and giving it a place in the house he buys with his wife. The one piece that continues to elude him? His father’s desk. Still other characters face various challenges of their own. An aging father must come to terms with the loss of his wife and his own imminent mortality while making a last desperate attempt to reach out to the son he has never understood. Another man discovers his wife has kept an enormous secret from him and, following her death, decides to investigate. A young woman struggles to fit herself into the world of the man she loves, his sister, and their imposing father. Each of these figures tells a compelling story, and each of them bears some relation to the desk—some in a positive way, some less so. Several voices in the book immerse the reader in Jewish culture, referring to locations and events that are directly related to it. The very title is drawn from the Torah, though the explanation is saved for the end as a means of tying all the threads together. Within the context of the novel, religion is not enough to sustain a person’s sense of self- worth, and it is made clear that when a person ties her faith or inspiration to a physical object, it can only
