G1056 Book Review of Wunderland by Jennifer Cody Epstein
Author: Jennifer Cody Epstein
ISBN: 978-0-525-57690-7
Publisher: Crown
Type of book: 1930s to 1989, dual timeline, Germany, life as Mischling, friendship, family, relationships, secrets, life post WW2, America, living, estrangement
Year it was published: 2019
Summary:
East Village, 1989
Things had never been easy between Ava Fisher and her estranged mother Ilse. Too many questions hovered between them: Who was Ava's father? Where had Ilse been during the war? Why had she left her only child in a German orphanage during the war's final months? But now Ilse's ashes have arrived from Germany, and with them, a trove of unsent letters addressed to someone else unknown to Ava: Renate Bauer, a childhood friend. As her mother's letters unfurl a dark past, Ava spirals deep into the shocking history of a woman she never truly knew.
Berlin, 1933
As the Nazi party tightens its grip on the city, Ilse and Renate find their friendship under siege--and Ilse's increasing involvement in the Hitler Youth movement leaves them on opposing sides of the gathering storm. Then the Nuremburg Laws force Renate to confront a long-buried past, and a catastrophic betrayal is set in motion...
An unflinching exploration of Nazi Germany and its legacy, Wunderland is a at once a powerful portrait of an unspeakable crime history and a page-turning contemplation of womanhood, wartime, and just how far we might go in order to belong.
Characters:
Main characters include Ava, Ilse's daughter who has recently had to disclose a long-held secret to her own daughter. Ava has had a very turbulent history and has a very fractured relationship with her mother, Ilse, whom she sees as a traditional hausfrau. In 1930s, Ilse is best friends with Renate and tends to be daring and saucy, but then she becomes involved Hitler's Youth Movement, and is a very prominent writer. Due to her decisions, she is forced to keep many secrets secret from her daughter, causing the two become estranged. Renate is Ilse's best friend, a half-Jew (from father) who is forced to live as a Jew during 1930s when she identifies very little with her father's religion. (In fact, she doesn't even know she is Jewish.)
Theme:
What do we really know of ourselves and our friends
Plot:
The story is in third person narrative from Ava's, Renate's and even Ilse's points of view. Very similar to THE GODS OF HEAVENLY PUNISHMENT, the chapters are from different points of view, and they begin at interesting perspectives: Ava's begins in 1989 but then it goes backwards, while Renate's begins in 1933 but goes forward, and the two eventually meet up with an event that tests both of women's friendships with one another. I also was very sad at how Renate and Ilse viewed Judaism, although I understand why they viewed it the way they did. I also should mention that the going backwards timeline with Ava is reminiscent of THE HOPE FAULT by Tracy Farr, and WUNDERLAND is of the pre-WW2 years rather than the too oft described WW2. In here is where the reader watches hate rise up and where ugliness begins to fester over and then boils over, with second generation left to pick up the pieces and put them back together.
Author Information:
(From the book)
Jennifer Cody Epstein is the authro of the international bestseller THE PAINTER FROM SHANGHAI ("luminous...irresistible"-THE NEW YORK TIMES BOK REVIEW), and THE GODS OF HEAVENLY PUNISHMENT, winner of the 2014 Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Honor Award for outstanding fiction. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.
Opinion:
I feel terribly guilty that I waited so long to both read and review WUNDERLAND by Jennifer Cody Epstein. I found it a great book, perhaps even better than her predecessor, THE GODS OF HEAVENLY PUNISHMENT, but I think mainly because of the topic it dealt with, as well as the fact that around that time I read Kelly Rimmer's novel, THE THINGS WE CANNOT SAY, which also dealt with WW2, it took me a long to process and understand the story as well as feel ready to review it. And both books affected me deeply. Because of my heritage and ethnicity, I have difficulty in reading tales that are set pre-ww2, and that is the year when WUNDERLAND takes place in. (It is a dual timeline between 1933 and 1989 (oddly enough, WW2 itself is skipped over) which contains mathematical precision of going back and uncovering the truth.) This is also a tale that will shock many readers to the core, especially in judging and of how hidden truths and heritages become.It is a very bittersweet tale of what happens when nationalism is in control.
This was given for a review
5 out of 5
(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)
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