Far to Go

February 28, 2011
In her second novel (after The Sweet Edge), Pick tackles the Holocaust with the story of a young Jewish family struggling to survive as the Nazis invade Czechoslovakia. Throughout 1938 and 1939, Pavel and Anneliese Bauer endure increasingly terrifying attacks on their dignity, freedom, and lives, clinging to a hope that the madness will soon end. Meanwhile, a present-day Holocaust historian (who remains awkwardly unidentified for some time), specializing in the Kindertransport and the many children it helped to escape from Czechoslovakia, takes a personal interest in the Bauers. Letters culled from the historian's files, written by people who were close to the Bauers, effectively punctuate the novel, but Pick's shuffling gamble with point-of-view produces mixed results. For instance, Marta, who both propels the tale and plays a significant role in it, is sometimes so naïve as to be unconvincing. But period details are authentic and well presented, as are the family's suffering and grief.

April 15, 2011
The main story here begins in September 1938 in the Sudetenland, the ethnically German part of Czechoslovakia that would be annexed by Hitler on October 1 of that year. The Bauer familysmall businessman Pavel; his wife, Anneliese; their son, Pepik; and Pepiks nurse, Martalives outside the capital, secure in the peace brought by the national hero, Jan Masaryk. Movingly told from the perspective of loyal Marta, the disintegration of the Bauers world in the face of Hitlers onslaught is completed when they pay a bribe to put Pepik on a train, the Kindertransport, to Scotland. A second story is told through chapter spacers that consist of the latter-day writings of a Holocaust researcher and letters by characters in the main story as well as the chilling listing of the dates of the writers deaths at the hands of the Nazis. The researcher has collected oral histories of Kindertransport children like Pepik, along with letters and documents. The two stories merge when the reasearcher gives Pepik his file.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)