Harriet Klausner's Review Archive
For the past fifteen years or so, Hungarian Jew Nora Gratz has lived a harsh life with her husband missing for more than a decade and her son now dead. She detests her daughter-in-law Louisa, daughter of die hard German Nazis, but family is family. Truth be told, Louisa is the only reason Nora survived the holocaust because she hid her mother-in-law from the Nazis after her spouse died.
In 1949 Nora, accompanied by her daughter in law, Louisa immigrates to Israel. However, her cousin fails to meet her at the Haifa docks. Nora and Louisa live in a camp where Holocaust survivors treat the younger woman with hatred and contempt. Willing to convert to Judaism, Louisa remains an abomination to the embittered survivors of Europe.
LOUISA, the retelling of the biblical story of Ruth, is an extraordinary work because Simone Zelitch provides perceptiveness into the parallel stories. Readers will feel a sense of time and place through the characters. Readers obtain a feel for the turmoil of the 1930s and 1940s in Hungary as well as a taste of 1949 Israel. The characters are drawn relatively simplistically and unsympathetically, but surprisingly that provides deeper insight into relationships, especially that of Nora and Louisa. The ultimate accolade to the author is that the audience will take a fresh look at the Ruth-Naomi tale.