Reviews

• Exceptional work, well written and thoroughly enjoyable.

  Exceptional work ,well written and thoroughly enjoyable.

• Keys to the House

  Nicole Krauss' latest book THE GREAT HOUSE should more than meet the expectations of readers of her previous work, The History of Love. There is no doubt that Ms. Krauss can write and write well... and her characters live on in haunting memory after the book is safely settled back in the bookcase after a second reading. Yes, a second reading is recommended...This is an intelligent and complex book that requires study to fully appreciate. In this newest work, the plot brings together alternating stories of people who have been in possession of a desk, taken from a Jewish family by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The first chapter introduces the latest owner who acquired the desk on loan, from a young man, Daniel, heading back to Chile during the time of Pinochet's dictatorship. Nadia, the current keeper of the desk, writes from this towering monstrosity. It takes over the room and captures the imagination of those who enter her bleak domicile, where the desk takes on a character of its own as a witness. Nadia hears of Daniel's torture and death at the hands of Pincohet's henchmen and the desk stands witness to this horror as it did during the Holocaust. Ever waiting for someone to come and reclaim the desk, Nadia is still staggered when the proported daughter of this long dead man arrrives and asks for its return. In a later chapter we follow her to Israel to find the desk without which she loses the meaning of her life and her writing... only to bring more injury and mayhem to a young man who reminds her of the dead Daniel. The ensuing trial, ties in yet another set of characters, equally affected by earlier deaths and truamas during wars fighting for Israeli independence in which both a father and son participate causing strain and distance between them as they both keep to their secrets... Another of the desk's owners, Lotte, a Holocaust survivor, also a writer, is later introduced. She is tied to the desk (given to her as a unexplained "gift" from a former lover)though her writing. The desk is an everpresent wedge in her long marriage to her long suffering husband who sees it as a symbol of her past which he can never enter as he respectfully tries to allow her to survive with her secrets. His life is disturbed when the younger Daniel of previous chapters arrives unexpectedly to see his wife, and is given the desk by Lotte, leaving her husband to endless questions of what this action represents. He later finds, in its replacement table, the shocking information that has been kept from him in their long complex, marriage. The tying together of these stories rests with Weisz, who is a restorer of memories through the replacement of pieces of furnitures seized during the Nazi regime from Jewish families whose lives are pieced back together by restoring some tangible piece of memory locked in the wood of furniture or artwork. As he helps others he continually searches for the last piece of his own father's room which is has painfully reconstructed and where the desk was originally placed. His son and daughter are brought into play as the keepers and finders of these memories until the daughter makes the daring move to break off and keep the key that unlocks the desk with the suggestion that at a later time, she will give it to Weisz's grandson after her brother is free to live life away from the burden of their father's grief and imposed familial closeness in musoleums of pain and remembrance: houses filled with reclaimed furniture in search of their original owners. Uniting all these characters are the pervasive trials of war, death, loss,conflicts between children and parents as they try to cope with past tragedies as their poison seeps into the next generation. This book brings the never ending trauma of war into clear prospective. While death and memory of pain remain, life rebuilds slowly and in the written word and the tangible remains lurking in inanimate objects the story is retold for future generations ever reminding them to be on guard that these things ever be forgotten. It lends insight into how the past impinges on the future and how children often bare the burdens of their parents' pasts.

• A great novel

  I am very impressed by this book. I have read the authors husband's books. I like them but this is a very good novel or story. Her language is so good and I am looking forward to ' from her pen or computer. I highly recommend her book to everybody who likes a really good story well written. Lena Heinemann

• Riveting

  Brilliant writing with poignant characters whose stories weave into a complex tapestry. Each of the episodes, however, leaves threads hanging untied. I’m left wanting more feeling nothing is finished, just ended.

• En tiempo pero sin celofan, sucio pero sin daños fisicos.

  El libro llegó en tiempo pero sin celofán, por tal motivo esta todo lleno de polvo y algo sucio. Nada que no se arregló echandole una limpiadita. Puntito menos porque queda la impresión de que duró bastante tiempo almacenado y ni se tomaron tiempo de quitarle el polvito.

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