All things Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tonys

The festival’s Jury Grand Prix was awarded to “The Turin Horse” by Hungarian director B?la Tarr. The minimalistic black-and-white film, which Tarr has said will be his last, shows the bleak life of a peasant and his daughter using almost no dialogue and little if any plot. When picking up his Silver Bear award, Tarr bypassed the podium, declining to thank the jury or address the crowd. He did attend the news conference, though without his trophy.

“Words for me are not so nice,” Tarr said. “The most important thing is to show you something,” he said, referring his film. At the festival Tarr and other filmmakers attempted to draw attention to dramatic cuts in government funding to the Hungarian film industry.

Best director kudos went to Germany’s Ulrich K?hler for his “Sleeping Sickness,” about disconnected and drifting French and German medical aid workers in Cameroon; its languid pace had festival critics divided. K?hler reminded journalists at the news conference to think of Panahi, saying that, as a fan of the Iranian director’s work, he had selfish reasons for wanting Panahi to be free — so he could make more films.

The Silver Bear for best script went to “The Forgiveness of Blood” by Joshua Marston and Andamion Murataj. Set in Albania, and, said Marston in his acceptance speech, “written from hundreds of conversations with many Albanians,” the story explores the generation gap between open-minded and technology-obsessed young people and their stubborn parents, who are caught in a legacy of violent blood feuds over land disputes and slights to family honor. This is Marston’s first feature since “Maria Full of Grace.”

This year’s award for outstanding artistic achievement was split between two winners, each of whom worked on the film “The Prize.” Wojciech Staron won for cinematography and Barbara Enriquez for production design for their contributions to director Paula Markovitch’s autobiographical story of a girl growing up in a small seaside town in Argentina under fascism.

Germany’s “If Not Us, Who,” about the origins of the Baader-Meinhof gang, directed by Andreas Veiel, took home the Alfred Bauer Prize awarded to a feature film that “broadens the horizons of the art of filmmaking.” This is Veiel’s second film tackling the theme of terrorism inside Germany and the Red Army Faction; his first was the 2001 documentary “Black Box BRD.”

Both short film winners hailed from South Korea. Park Chan-Wook and Park Chan-Kyong took the Golden Bear for their fantasy film “Night Fishing,” shot entirely on on iPhone. The Silver Bear went to Yang Hyo-Joo for “Broken Night,” about an unlucky insurance fraudster. 

“On the Ice” from Andrew Okpeaha MacLean took the best first feature award, given out by a three-member panel of filmmakers and writers. The film, set in Barrow, Alaska, was filmed in English and the Inuit language Inupiaq, and screened in the festival’s Generation section for children and youths; the film also won Generation’s Crystal Bear for best film in the 14-plus category.

The Berlinale’s Panorama section distributed its audience awards earlier on Saturday.  Spanish director Iciar Bollain’s satire “Even the Rain,” starring Gael Garcia Bernal, was the favorite feature; it is also Spain’s foreign-language Oscar contribution. Germany’s “In Heaven Underground — The Weissensee Jewish Cemetery,” Britta Wauer’s look at the largest Jewish cemetery still in use in Europe, won for best documentary.

On Friday, the Teddy Award for best gay and lesbian film went to “Absent” by Marco Berger, an Argentinian drama about a student manipulating a favorite teacher. 

–Susan Stone, reporting from Berlin 

Photo: Director Asghar Farhadi with his Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival. Credit: Johannes Eisele / AFP/Getty Images

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George Gershwin (Yale Broadway Masters Series) by Larry Starr

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In this welcome addition to the immensely popular Yale Broadway Masters series, Larry Starr focuses fresh attention on George Gershwin’s Broadway contributions and examines their centrality to the composer’s entire career. Starr presents Gershwin as a composer with a unified musical vision—a vision developed on Broadway and used as a source of strength in his well-known concert music. In turn, Gershwin’s concert-hall experience enriched and strengthened his musicals, leading eventually to his great “Broadway opera,” Porgy and Bess.

Through the prism of three major shows—Lady Be Good (1924), Of Thee I Sing (1931), and Porgy and Bess (1935)—Starr highlights Gershwin’s distinctive contributions to the evolution of the Broadway musical. In addition, the author considers Gershwin’s musical language, his compositions for the concert hall, and his movie scores for Hollywood in the light of his Broadway experience. (Source: Amazon.Com)

“An admirable effort to understand the key shows in Gershwin”s career and how the productions shaped him as a composer.”–Eric Felten, The Wall Street Journal

The Washington Post Book World – February 20, 2011 (Excerpt)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that George Gershwin (1898-1937) wrote some irresistible melodies. After that, the debate begins.

Was Gershwin an inspired tunesmith, pure and simple, who nevertheless remained a rank amateur when he attempted to compose in larger forms, such as in his piano concertos or for the opera house? Or did his early death rob us of a distinctly American master, somebody who might have yoked all the strains that made up our wondrously polyglot musical culture of the mid-20th century – jazz, blues, popular song, European classical stylings, modernist experimentation – into a sustained and unified expression?

Larry Starr’s valuable new book, titled simply “George Gershwin,” makes a strong case for the latter view. This is not a traditional biography (although Starr shares some potent biographical vignettes in a section called “Snapshots”) but rather an insightful, technically intricate yet easy-to-follow study of Gershwin’s music, particularly as it came out of the Broadway tradition. For, whatever else he was or might have become, Gershwin was a creature of American musical theater: He wrote the music for 19 complete shows on Broadway or on film and concluded his career with the opera “Porgy and Bess.” [Read the full article...]

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A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

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History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky

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“It is so nice to be happy. It always gives me a good feeling to see other people happy. . . . It is so easy to achieve.” —Kim’s journal entry, May 3, 1988

On the night of April 15, 1990, Jill Bialosky’s twenty-one-year-old sister Kim came home from a bar in downtown Cleveland. She argued with her boyfriend on the phone. Then she took her mother’s car keys, went into the garage, closed the garage door. She climbed into the car, turned on the ignition, and fell asleep. Her body was found the next morning by the neighborhood boy her mother hired to cut the grass.

Those are the simple facts, but the act of suicide is anything but simple. For twenty years, Bialosky has lived with the grief, guilt, questions, and confusion unleashed by Kim’s suicide. Now, in a remarkable work of literary nonfiction, she re-creates with unsparing honesty her sister’s inner life, the events and emotions that led her to take her life on this particular night. In doing so, she opens a window on the nature of suicide itself, our own reactions and responses to it—especially the impact a suicide has on those who remain behind.

Combining Kim’s diaries with family history and memoir, drawing on the works of doctors and psychologists as well as writers from Melville and Dickinson to Sylvia Plath and Wallace Stevens, Bialosky gives us a stunning exploration of human fragility and strength. She juxtaposes the story of Kim’s death with the challenges of becoming a mother and her own exuberant experience of raising a son. This is a book that explores all aspects of our familial relationships—between mothers and sons, fathers and daughters—but particularly the tender and enduring bonds between sisters.

History of a Suicide brings a crucial and all too rarely discussed subject out of the shadows, and in doing so gives readers the courage to face their own losses, no matter what those may be. This searing and compassionate work reminds us of the preciousness of life and of the ways in which those we love are inextricably bound to us. (Source: Amazon.Com)

“An extraordinarily valiant and resonant testimony to the healing powers of truth and empathy.” —Booklist

“A beautifully composed, deeply reflective work.” —Publishers Weekly

“In quietly piercing language, [Bialosky] delivers a sure sense of a “beautiful girl” who took her own life at age 21 and of what it means to grieve such a death, burdened with an awful sense of responsibility that can’t easily be shared with others.” —Library Journal

“This is the kind of book that can teach us—all of us—about what it means to be a thinking, feeling human being. A book, in other words, that will teach you how to live.” —Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life

“The plain language of Bialosky’s title reflects this book’s quiet, intimate and profoundly understated art: a clear medium penetrating into the wounded and wounding mystery of her subject.” —Robert Pinsky, former United States Poet Laureate

“That rare book that is so articulate and stunningly close to the bone that one holds one’s breath while reading it. . . . Written with a poet’s eye and a novelist’s gift, History of a Suicide is remarkable for its author’s bravery, candor and ability to tolerate the intolerable.” —A.M. Homes, author of This Book Will Save Your Life

“Jill Bialosky has written an extraordinary book, which brings her sister Kim to life and also serves as a practical road map to understanding why life can become unbearable for someone who seems extravagantly gifted. Readers will find solace and clarity in this wonderful book.” - —Susan Cheever, author of Home Before Dark

“Beautiful and incredibly brave. . . . Jill Bialosky has stared straight into the white hot heart of something very-nearly unspeakable and in doing so, has illuminated it—both for herself, and for ourselves. I can’t tell you how many times I caught my breath, how many times I cried.” - —Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion

“Jill Bialosky is such a fearless and clear-eyed and compassionate writer that although we know from the start how the story she tells will turn out, we cannot stop reading. By bringing her sister so vividly to life on these pages, she performs a great service. As much as anything else I’ve read, this book dispels the comforting and pernicious myth by which we keep the subject at a distance: that suicide happens only in other people’s families.” - —George Howe Colt, author of November of the Soul

“Like a match in the darkness, Jill Bialosky’s stirring memoir sheds light on a fathomless mystery. This intimate, brave book is a testament to the redeeming power of love, memory, and art.” —Melanie Thernstrom, author of The Pain Chronicles

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A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

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The Shah – A Portrait of Mohammad Reza Pahlevi by Abbas Milani

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A deeply researched portrait of Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, this biography extracts the personality of the last shah of Iran from the royal grandiosity in which he lived. Milani describes him as timid, prone to vacillation, and prey to conspiracy theories, perhaps not ideal traits in an absolute monarch who initiated a modernizing revolution from above, only to be dethroned in 1979 by social forces his authoritarian policies had unleashed. Recounting the shah’s childhood, Milani underscores how closely he was supervised by his father, a military officer who had seized the throne in 1925.

In a 1941 political crisis that resulted in young Mohammad’s ascension, the 1953 coup against the Mossadegh government, and the 1978–79 revolution, Milani depicts the shah as fretful, indecisive, and obsessed with detail, extensively citing British and American diplomatic reports about him. The shah’s private life, which included three wives, alleged mistresses, and extravagances in palaces and other riches, is effectively depicted. With sympathy born of a compassion for someone in over his head, Milani’s meticulous amassing of facts establishes a base for readers to form their own opinions. –Gilbert Taylor, Booklist

The Los Angeles Times Book Review – February 20, 2011 (Excerpt)

It was uncanny to read the closing chapters of this splendidly detailed biography of the last shah of Iran while tumultuous and jubilant crowds in Egypt drove Hosni Mubarak from power.The parallels were so close they seemed to come out of some fanciful fiction.

Like Mubarak, the shah—in power for 37 years—was blinded by a megalomania and a thirst for power that isolated him from the needs and demands of his people. Like Mubarak, the shah, spurning the advice of others, refused to initiate reforms until it was too late to satisfy his critics. Like Mubarak, the shah, who fled Iran in 1979, had maintained a facade of strength and stability that lulled the United States into believing that the iron-clad strength of its Middle Eastern ally was in no danger of cracking.

But the biographer Abbas Milani, the head of the Iranian studies program at Stanford University, is not trying to depict the life and downfall of the shah as a model for political upheavals in the Middle East. [Read the full article...]

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The Life of Gaius Julius Caesar

A Novel by Philip Katz

“Imperator – The Life of Gaius Julius Caesar” by Philip Katz is a fictional recreation of the life of the greatest of all Romans, Gaius Julius Caesar. It is a personal memoir, the inside story of his world as viewed through his eyes, written in the first person, suppressed by Caesar’s successors, only to be rediscovered in modern times. [More...]

Available in all good bookstores and Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and more.

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What Condition My Condition Is In

Okay, so I’ve been waiting and waiting to get my very first royalty check from my publisher for Vampire Ascending.  Checking the mail box daily, by Friday when I didn’t get it in the mail, I wondered what was going on.

So, later, when I check my e-mails, I find I have a message from my publisher, Mr. Voss. Well, he tells me he has just sent it. He gave me the amount that I would be getting on the check. It was well over what I even hoped it would be–my limited knowledge of the royalty system, and trying to figure out the possible percentages from those who get discounts, I was way low. Happily I await the check, but disappointed Monday is a holiday and probably won’t get it until next Wednesday. I need print ink for my printer and several other things. *sigh*

I wrote in my personal journal that I will know when I’ve made it when I no longer have to live here, no longer have to drive a bus for a living, my husband can do whatever he wants, and we live off my royalties. Um, that’s a long ways off, unless I get discovered.

I’m ever hopeful.

I’m getting very excellent reviews or reports from people who have read my book. 3 reviews are up at Amazon. Two are 5-stars out of 5.

The manager of the Borders store where I had a book signing at in January read my book and told me right away, “I love your book! It is more real and more adult . . .”[than Twilight]

I’ve been getting that lately. One reviewer had said that he did not read vampire books–hated the “Twilight” series/movies. Yet when he read my book he was very enthusiastic, and became a fan, wanting to read the next instalment of my Sabrina Strong series.

Yesterday I finished up an interview with Tyler of Reader Views. They were one of the three who have reviewed my book, and had given it a 5-star rating. I’ll know when this interview is posted at some point, maybe as soon as next week. I’m ever hopeful that this gives me more exposure to readers–and hoping that an agent spots me. There is always that chance that an agent is lurking in the background, searching for something new and hot. HEY! OVER HERE!

And I saw a blurb about the Sookie Stackhouse series ending in a blog I follow. I have not checked on this, but I will. What a time for my books to fill a gap! One of my reviews (actually my editor) mentioned that if you like those books by Charlaine Harris, you will like Vampire Ascending.

So, as the full moon rose last night through the trees in my backyard, it reminded me of the little problem I have given my protagonist in the second novel Vampire’s Trill. It opens up with her having to address this, and other aspects of her changing life as a sibyl and a Were-creature. I like giving Sabrina various problems. I think it helps readers identify with someone who finds their job a pain to go to. Well, you would too if you had to work with vampires and a few of them were really really interested in you. And not just in your blood. (Did I mention that this series was more real and more adult?)

Well, gentle readers, should you want to investigate my book(s) and a more kept-up blog, please go to Lorelei’s Muse at http://loreleismuse-lorelei.blogspot.com

I have excerpt of the first chapter of next book, Vampire’s Trill, at my sister blog Lorelei’s Archives http://loreleisarchives.blogspot.com/2011/02/vampires-trill-first-full-chapter-long.html/  should you like to check that out.

And my book/Kindle version for Vampire Ascending can be found at Amazon.com

Also, should you like to visit the facebook page for my book, you can simply type in Vampire Ascending into the search window next time you are at facebook.

My G-mail is loreleibell4@gmail.com if anyone wishes to contact me.

 Well, that’s it for now. I hope to update sooner the next time. We are into Spring-like weather, with some winter trying to hang on, but my feeling is that it won’t hold on much longer.

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Young Michelangelo: The Path to the Sistine: A Biography by John T. Spike

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A case could be made that the ridiculously talented Florentine artist Michelangelo Buonarroti set the standard that all subsequent art work strives to reach. But does pondering the sensuous “David” or the moving “Pieta,” both created before he reached the age of 30, tell us just who Michelangelo was?

Frankly, no, but John T. Spike, an art historian, curator and critic has done some impressive research to flesh out the early years of the artist’s life, right up until his return to Rome in 1508 to focus on a commission in the Sistine Chapel. The young sculptor’s daunting talent and quest to earn as much money as possible are woven into the story of the Italian Renaissance and the outsized figures of the age. (Source: The Washington Post Book World)

‘Tense and agile as an early sculpture, YOUNG MICHELANGELO is a compelling portrait of the artist as a young man in a dangerous time.’ Peter Robb, Author of M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio ‘Spike crystallizes historical detail into vivid, memorable imagery… Alternating between accounts of the turbulent political atmosphere and details of Michelangelo’s most private moments in the sculpture studio, Spike creates a rich narrative that promises more intrigue than the best adventure novel.’ – Publishers Weekly

This biography of Michelangelo covers the years in which he was striving for public recognition of his artistic genius, so should be of interest not only to all those interested in Renaissance art, but also to all up and coming young professionals. In those days, prior to our current unprecedented levels of mass media hype, how did one gain widespread publicity and attain elevated levels of self-promotion? How, in brief, did one make a name for oneself? Starting by drawing over his master’s drawings so as to improve the latter and challenging the older students in the sculpture studio was not bound to win him any popularity with either his instructor, or with members of his peer group, though it did start Michelangelo on his way to greatness. In short, he was lacking neither in talent, nor in ambition, having much in common with many of our modern-day winners of “Idols”. After the initial rejection of some of his early work, most notably that of a Bacchus reeling from drink, he restores his own credibility by unleashing the virile David from a ruined block of marble. His obsession with the telling of his own story is also not unique to his time – how many aspirant hopefuls are not obsessed with the telling of their own tale? Underwriting Ascanio Condivi’s biography of his life, as well as two editions of Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists, sounds all the more familiar in the modern age of ghost writing and vaunting by publicists of the greatness of artists’ work.

However, the truth will out, and that is exactly where John T. Spike’s biography excels. Through painstaking research and a determination to get to the bottom of things, he reveals the reality of both the life and times of the young Michelangelo. His writing exposes to us the vulnerability of the great man, as well as the fallacies and foibles of his age – a heady experience. Spike also does not stint on illustrations of Michelangelo’s work in this fascinating 312-page biography, containing 60 illustrations, many of which are in color. His 17-page bibliography attests to the extent of his research and to the depths of his insight into the life and early artistic emanations of this master of the Italian Renaissance. As critic, curator, and art historian, Dr. John T. Spike is eminently suited for the task of unraveling the intricacies of the past. With more than twenty culturally significant books on Renaissance, Baroque, and contemporary art to his name, and a career during which he has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Oxford, Spike has established himself as a leading expert in the field. Not only that, but he’s also a damn fine writer too, who will have you glued to the page from start to finish.

Labeled by Rosa King, author of Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling as “one of our most astute and readable authorities on the Italian Renaissance…[who] approaches the artist through a compelling blend of solid scholarship, animated storytelling, and shrewd insight”, Spikes does merit to the artist and his work. Young Michelangelo: The Path to the Sistine should be prescribed reading for all with an active interest in Renaissance art, whatever their level of knowledge and expertise on the subject. – L.C. Henderson, Bookpleasures.Com

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The Life of Gaius Julius Caesar

A Novel by Philip Katz

“Imperator – The Life of Gaius Julius Caesar” by Philip Katz is a fictional recreation of the life of the greatest of all Romans, Gaius Julius Caesar. It is a personal memoir, the inside story of his world as viewed through his eyes, written in the first person, suppressed by Caesar’s successors, only to be rediscovered in modern times. [More...]

Available in all good bookstores and Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and more.

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The History of History – A Novel Of Berlin by Ida Hattemer-Higgins

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The Holocaust is a dark star, forever pulling new writers into its orbit. First-time novelist Hattemer-Higgins dramatizes with phantasmagoric magnitude the crisis of conscience following the genocide, drawing on her experience working in Berlin as a walking-tour guide, a role she assigns to her protagonist. An American with a German father, Margaret Taub has survived a mysterious trauma that has erased her memory of recent months and left her afflicted with nightmarish visions. As she ushers tourists to Nazi sites, the city turns to flesh before her eyes, and Nazi Madga Goebbels, who murdered her children as military defeat loomed, stalks her in the form of a bird of prey. Margaret is also visited by the ghost of a Jewish woman who committed suicide after killing her children to save them from Nazi torture.

Determined to regain her past, Margaret contends with a blind, knife-throwing “memory surgeon” and a spying neighbor. She knows she’s guilty, but of what? With unbridled imagination and exquisite command, Hattemer-Higgins explodes the concept of remembrance and confronts the “spiritual aftershock” of the Holocaust in a gloriously hellish and fiercely surreal dreamscape with echoes of fairy tales, Heinrich von Kleist, and Hermann Hesse, to create a bewitching and unnerving novel stunning in its artistry, audacity, and insight. –Donna Seaman, Booklist

The History of History is a great read, a wonderful first novel. It’s also a hard-working, ungimmicky, well-wrought book. These days every blogger can have a printout of his blogs stuck between two pieces of cardboard, wrapped up in a wax paper jacket and raced to Barnes & Noble so fast the publisher doesn’t have time to include Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, much less edit the damn thing. But this is a book into which the author obviously put care, passion, and, I will argue, authenticity.

This is a novel about an American who guides walking tours in Berlin, a city where the only history is Nazi history. One of the many oddities of contemporary Germany is that the concentration camps, the Hitler Bunker and other destinations are haunted by people who used to live and work there. They’re all of retirement age now, and so they hang out for attention, for money, or just because they have nothing better to do. There are the old survivors, the old storm troopers, and the old crazies, and it’s often not easy to tell the difference. One self-declared Dachau inmate in 1994 was enough for me, but Ida Hattemer-Higgins made her living in this twilight world for several years. Imagine a waxworks of horrors, with the real-life horrors regularly dropping in to visit. A Grand-Guignol theater with special guest performances by reanimated cadavers, real killers, and crazy people who think they died or think they killed. Imagine working there for a good long while. And imagine the whole country is a little bit like working there: ubiquitous, minor, passing, forgivable, utterly understandable complicity. Proud little stories. I won’t give away anything from the book, but I heard one of my own, Grandpa G?nther served in the Ukraine, so of course when the bakery lady fainted from the heat, he jumped over the counter, picked her up and raced her to safety. You know, like she was his Wehrmacht comrade, and another village was burning. And then there’s the general uncanny atavistic ferality in the Teuton air, the self-seriousness of the nation of Mercedes-Benz, descended from the inconceivable brutality of the Thirty Years War and farther back, from the barbarians who lived naked in lightless forests, terrified Tacitus, had no land, only cattle, and chopped more than one Roman general and emperor into very small pieces.

The effect of this country and this employment on an impressionable and literary young lady from Cincinnati? Delirium. Fantasy and reality can blend, especially when reality is the worse of the two. My own experiences, my reading of the book and my sense of the author’s tenor at a reading I was lucky enough to attend — all these things convince me that The History of History is a veiled work of creative non-fiction in the tradition of the New Journalism. The prose is better than real life, but the rest strikes me as just about right.

What we have here, then, is a fascinating real story that goes way off the Holocaust reservation. There are set rules in what we American Jews call “Shoah Business.” It has a lot to do with US ethnic identity and US foreign policy, and stands at some distance — a voyeuristic, bloodlustful, perverse yet quite comfortable distance — from fact. The American literary tradition of Cynthia Ozick, Jonathan Littell and other perpetrators is now half a century old, and grafts sloppy yet ostentatious research and the absence of knowledge of basic German onto picture-book fakeries. Steven Spielberg meets the Writers’ Workshop of the University of Iowa. One story in Ozick’s Pagan Rabbi, for example, has a German narrator talking about Ozick’s Upper East Side fantasy Holocaust and referring to his sister as “Margaretchen.” The protagonist of The History of History is named Margaret. And among other ways in which Ida Hattemer-Higgins surpasses, with her debut novel, Cynthia Ozick’s collected works is that Ida Hattemer-Higgins knows that the diminutive of Margarethe is Gretchen.

The History of History adopts no politics, and so will not be defended by the political left, historically the only group to have undertaken an objective look at fascism. Yet it is a book worth defending. It powerfully tells a recognizable real story about an eternal theme, going mad because the world is mad. It is a beautiful book, a vulnerable book; see for yourself. – LLM 2007, Amazon.Com Customer Review

The Washington Post Book World – February 19, 2011 (Excerpt)

Berlin, the least storied of the great European capitals, not much more than an oversize village as late as the 18th century, is today one of the most vibrant cities on the continent, though it has a ferocious 20th-century past: Nazi headquarters, Allied aerial bombardment, destruction by the Russians at the end of World War II and its walled-in existence during the Cold War.

Although Ida Hattemer-Higgins’s “The History of History” is a novel, it’s also a virtual guide to the city, as its subtitle suggests. The protagonist, Margaret Taub, is an American history student at the Free University, working part time as a guide for English-speaking tourists. The painstaking detail of her narrative map of Berlin and the plausible, often amusing reactions of her customers to her explanations of the sites form the realistic side of the novel. The other side is a fantasy about the merging of past and present, beginning with Margaret’s partial amnesia when she wakes one morning in a forest and has forgotten what happened to her in the past few months. [Read the full article...]

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A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

View the original article here