The fortunate ones : a novel / Ellen Umansky.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780062382481 (hardcover) :
- Physical Description: 324 pages ; 24 cm
- Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: New York : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2017.
- Copyright: ©2017.
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Jewish refugees > Great Britain > Fiction. Jews, Austrian > England > Fiction. Guilt > Fiction. Female friendship > Fiction. Painting > Fiction. Paintings > Fiction. Young women > Fiction. Guilt > Fiction. |
Genre: | Psychological fiction. Historical fiction. |
Available copies
- 8 of 8 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 0 of 0 copies available at Sechelt/Gibsons.
- 0 of 0 copies available at Gibsons Public Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 8 total copies.
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
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- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2017 January #1
*Starred Review* The Kindertransport, the recovery of Nazi-looted art, family ties, and adjustments to great lossâtaken individually, these are recurrent themes in literary fiction. In Umansky's first novel, they're brought together in an original and tremendously moving way in the portrayal of two women who feel like walking ghosts after their parents' deaths. Rose Zimmer is a former child refugee from Vienna who moved to Britain in the 1940s; Lizzie Goldstein is a lawyer who returns home to contemporary Los Angeles for her father's funeral. She and Rose, now an astute, prickly septuagenarian, develop an unusual friendship. Their families had once owned the same Chaim Soutine expressionist painting, and both had it stolen amid traumatic circumstances. The missing artwork holds great meaning for them, and they ponder its whereabouts. But this multilayered novel isn't a mystery, although it satisfies in that respect. Instead, it's a gradual revelation of character, and of significant events from the women's personal histories. Their journeys are engrossing to follow. Rose's story is brought forward in time from 1936, illustrating her inner strength, while Lizzie navigates relationships with her sister, her Jewishness, and a surprising new lover. The clarity of detail in Umansky's writing brings all her scenes to life. She sensitively addresses the complicated issue of survivor's guilt and leaves readers with a sense of hope. Copyright 2017 Booklist Reviews. - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2016 November #2
A missing painting connects the lives of Rose, a woman who escaped the Holocaust as a young girl, and Lizzie, a 37-year-old lawyer whose father just died.After Rose's parents put her and her brother on the Kindertransport from Vienna to England in 1939, she never saw them again. Also gone was The Bellhop, a painting by the expressionist Chaim Soutine. Over the years that followed, both Rose and The Bellhop separately found their ways to Los Angeles. The painting was purchased from a New York gallery by a wealthy eye surgeon named Joseph Goldstein, displayed in his steel-and-glass mansion overhanging a ravine in Los Angeles. When his daughter Lizzie, then 17, threw a wild house party when he was out of town, the painting, as well as a Picasso sketch, was stolen. Rose's husband read of the theft in the paper; she contacted Joseph. But Lizzie and Rose do not meet until Joseph's memorial service. By then, Lizzie's life has been as shaped by the missing Bellhop as Rose's hasâfor both, the painting's departure from their lives coincided with a brutal loss of innocence. Lizzie is powerfully drawn to Rose, trying to build their coincidental connection into a real friendship over coffee dates and movies, and you can see why. Despite all her lossesâon top of the Holocaust, her adored husband has recently diedâRose is an elegant, smart, utterly direct woman who loves the films of Roger Corman, tolerates no fools, and has strong opinions on everything. Her boyfriend is a Bruce Springsteen maniac. It is his offhand question about the insured value of the stolen artwork that drives Lizzie back into the investigation. A few of the plot developments at the end of the book are a little awkward, but when's the last time you read a novel that didn't have that problem? Umansky's richly textured and peopled novel tells an emotionally and historically complicated story with so much skill and confidence it's hard to believe it's her first. Copyright Kirkus 2016 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2016 October #1
Having survived World War II because her parents found her passage on a Kindertransport to the UK before disappearing from her life forever, Rose Zimmer spends the postwar years hunting for a Chaim Soutine painting her mother had owned and loved. It actually made its way to America, where in contemporary times Lizzie Goldstein is guilt-ridden over its theft during a party that she threw. With at 75,000-copy first printing.. Copyright 2016 Library Journal. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2016 December #1
Though 11-year-old Rose Zimmer hated leaving her parents, she and her older brother were transported from Austria to England in 1939 for their safety. For years, Rose was obsessed with a painting loved by her mother that was lost when her parents were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Decades later, in 2005, New York-based lawyer Elizabeth Goldstein is back in Los Angeles to attend her father's funeral. As a child, Lizzie had been fascinated by an odd painting in her father's house and still blames herself for its theft during a party she threw as a teen when her dad was out of town. So at the funeral, when she meets an older woman named Rose Downes who claims to be a friend of her father, she's stunned when Rose says her family had owned the painting back in Vienna. The scene is set for some major disclosures, but while alternating chapters relating Rose's transformation from girl to young woman to wife are appealing, the adult Lizzie's actions seem callow and less than sympathetic. VERDICT The journey the painting takes ends up being fairly pedestrian, and the denouement lacks the requisite drama. Umansky's debut holds promise, but the execution is ultimately uninspired. An optional purchase. [See Prepub Alert, 8/26/16.]âBette-Lee Fox, Library Journal. Copyright 2016 Library Journal. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 2016 December #3
When New York lawyer Lizzie Goldstein's father dies in a car accident, she arrives in Los Angeles to go through his houseâthe house where, 20 years earlier, she hosted a party as a teenager and a priceless painting by Chaim Soutine,
Copyright 2016 Publisher Weekly.The Bellhop , was stolen. Lizzie has been carrying the guilt around for decades, and at the funeral she meets the original owner of the painting: Rose Downes. In 1939, Rose and her brother had been two of many Jewish children on the kindertransports during World War II who were evacuated from Vienna to England, leaving behind their parents, their home, and in Rose's case, Soutine's bellhop. The story unfolds in alternating chapters of Lizzie's slow recovery from grief in L.A. and Rose's coming-of-age as a refugee in London. The two stories meet in 2008 when the women, both settled in L.A., become friends, united by the missing painting. For both women, the painting comes to represent what might have been and the complex past. Umansky's vivid telling of the scenes in Vienna and life in wartime London are lovingly juxtaposed against the modern angst of Southern California. (Feb.)