The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn
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Book Reviews of The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
Book Review: Mendelsohn and his elderly sources are so sympathetic; the presentation, however, asks the reader for a lot of patience
Summary: 3 Stars
There are some very important lessons in this book about what it was like to survive the Holocaust; what it was like NOT to survive; what it is like to research events relying on survivor's memories; how elusive is a true account of horrible events; what are the many forms of denial; what it is like to inherit this difficult legacy through one's own family members (and how poignant that so many of them who survived long enough for Mendelsohn to interview them died even before this work could be published!); what became of village identity when much of the population was being murdered; and many other important things.
Unfortunately, there are also lessons about the difficulties of demanding too much of your readers. This book is too ambitious when it interweaves Jewish textual interpretation with the stories of WWII survivors. And the use of photography was little more than a tease. Small photographs placed in odd spots throughout the text perhaps did make the reader study them more carefully than if they had been larger, captioned, etc., but it added to the already considerable burden of hard work to read and digest this book. I wanted to like it. I don't regret reading it. But it limits its audience (and has clearly put some readers off) by its length and complexity.
Book Review: Don't go too cheap
Summary: 3 Stars
Having already read this book from the local library, I didn't want to spend much too much for a copy to use for reference to discuss certain aspects of the text. I don't remember the retailer's name, just went for "used" copy. The book I received was not printed in the same format as the original printing, and if you can believe it, the NAME of the book is not on the cover. The book itself is extremely interesting in the story of the lost family, and informative in Hebrew theology and history.