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This week I’m looking at some of the books listed for the Man Booker Prize, and trying to figure out the criteria used in determining the winning book.

That winner, this year, is The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. If you haven’t read it, here’s what it’s about: Tony, retired, divorced, looking back on his life, is about to discover that many of his observations about the  relationships and events of his life were based on misconception.

Mystery is brought into the story with Tony’s receipt of an unexpected and unexplained bequest. It is the  unraveling of the mystery of this bequest that leads to Tony’s ultimate perception that history and memory cannot lead to an accurate understanding of events; that in life, and, as this book bears witness, even in fiction, we cannot  expect to arrive at an adequate sense of an ending.

Another book on the short list was A D Miller’s Snowdrops. (Both The Sense of an Ending and Snowdrops could qualify for the description of ‘novella’ as each is a short and easy read.) Snowdrops has been described by more than one critic as a ‘psychological thriller’ but I tend to agree with the reviewer who called it, simply, a ‘crime novel’. It is, indeed, a novel about crime, in that it follows the story of a crime, even though that crime is hidden – from the protagonist as well as from the reader. But a work being considered for the Booker prize assumedly would have to be much more that a crime novel, and this little book packs several surprises in its punch: surprises because the culture described here is Russian, and nothing we have at home is quite like this.

About half-way through this story, the reader begins to understand that this light little novel is talking about something that is not light at all. Authored by a journalist whose former beat was Moscow, the book is written in a clean and refreshing style that conceals the macabre truth lying at the heart of this ultimately sinister tale.

I’m not saying I think it should have caught the Booker prize, but Snowdrops gives us a powerful, original and satisfying (if brief) read, and I am happy it made it to the short list.

The book that has piqued my curiosity most deviously is Canadian Esi Edugyan’s Half Blood Blues, another short-listed work. It’s an enthralling story about a black jazz group trapped inside Nazi Berlin.  Among its themes are jealousy, betrayal, and the political significance that music can achieve.

Its ending, however, has me puzzled — I can’t understand it at all. I wonder what other readers think. I would love to hear your interpretation of that final scene in the woods. Is Edugyan trying to convey a metaphysical message and if so, what is it? I’m assuming her meaning is about the self-inflicted harm we do when we seek to hide the truth from others – and from ourselves.

This is another book that examines self-deception and misconception. The protagonist, in this case,  stumbles through life wearing a permanent set of blinkers. Hmm…seems to be a favourite theme for this year’s judges.

Back to the Booker list – this time the long list – and another work that contains the theme of denial and self-deception: Far to Go, by another Canadian writer, Alison Pick, gives us (yet another) Holocaust story. This time  it is about a Jewish family that tries to get on with life under the Third Reich, pretending to a degree of normalcy that is unrealistic. A result of this denial is the fate of a little boy who is sent away in one of the Kindertransport’s sealed trains, to a destination that remains unknown to his parents. Because Pick is a published poet, this book would lead us to expect a language that is at least poetic, but the writing is mixed, sometimes even awkward. Nonetheless, the result is a good, if not great read, full of bitter poignancy: its highest value is in what t adds to our understanding of the human experience during extreme times.

So, as you see, after casting my jaundiced eye over this bevy of books I cannot find Booker prize-winning merit in any of them, including The Sense of an Ending. What, one wonders, was the set of criteria assigned to the Booker committee?  The scuttlebutt has it that there was no set, just one word: ‘readability’. Well! One can’t help but pity the poor committee members — can you think of a term more open to individual interpretation? I suppose I would have to say of the books I have discussed here, that A D Miller’s Snowdrops was the most readable, and the best of this lot.

There is, however, another book, one that in my opinion stands head and shoulders above the rest: next time I will be looking at the book I think should have won the Man Booker Prize. So stay tuned, and thanks for looking at my blog; comments are appreciated!

Far to Go by Alison Pick is one of the best reads for me this year. It made me realize a lot more in-depth about the Holocaust and its aftermath, that may be I wasn’t aware of earlier (This was before reading “The End” by Ian Kershaw). The entire idea of what one man was capable of shook me to my very being. We all know about the World War II and what happened to the Jews. We all know the mercenary behaviour of one man in the face of supremacy and the idea of creation of a, “supreme race”. Based on this, Far to Go has been written and I can only say one thing: I am glad that this book was written.

Far to Go follows two parallel stories (one set in the year leading to the start of World War II and the other is set in the present). The narrative takes place through the months from 1938 to 1939, when Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia is handed over to Nazi Germany. This brings out turmoil in the city’s residents and one particular secular Jewish family of the Bauers.

The Bauers – Pavel and Anneliese are living in peace and harmony till the invasion takes place. At the beginning they believe they will be safe as they aren’t practicing Jews. However, as events begin to unfold in front of their eyes, they decide to leave the country and protect themselves and their son Pepik.

The book is told through the eyes of Pepik’s Nanny Marta, and the reader is able to see the devastating effect the painful decisions have on the Bauer family. The parents are unable to leave the country, so they send their son to Britain on the Kindertransport, to keep him safe. Kindertransport in those times was a program through which 10,000 children were sent to Non-occupied Nazi areas without their parents. Marta on the other hand is Non-Jewish and is confused with all the anti-Jewish sentiments and comments prevalent in the air. She meets Ernst, Pavel’s colleague secretly every night and gets influenced by Ernst’s comments and opinions, though she is fully aware of how the Jewish are just regular people. And yet she betrays the family she works for.

I could understand Marta’s point of view to some extent. In the sense that she was lured and only wanted to impress Ernst and how she felt for him dictated most of her actions and drove her to be the person she wasn’t. While reading that, the questions that came to mind were: Is it so easy to betray the people you once liked and loved? How strong or weak are people in the face of circumstances? Who decides people’s fates then – other people or one man?
Far to Go questions identity and race as well – What does it mean to wake up one fine day and discover that life isn’t the same anymore just because you belong to a certain race of people? How would we feel if that were to happen to us in today’s time and age?

Alison Pick writes the book with great urgency and beauty. There were portions that overwhelmed me to such an extent that it was difficult for me to read further. Certain passages that spoke of the treatment vetted to Jews literally break the readers’ heart. The intensity of the writing comes from the fact that Alison’s grandparents were also survivors of World War II and fled from Czechoslovakia to Canada. I was deeply moved by the writing and my heart went out to characters more than once and I guess that is the beauty of powerful writing.

Far to Go was nominated for the Booker Long List 2011, however did not make it to the short list. I am amazed at that. Nonetheless, Far to Go is a book that I will not forget in a long time to come. Far to Go is a moving, human tale of perseverance and sometimes of the difficult choices we make as humans.

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Far to Go: A Novel (P.S.)

Far To Go follows the governess, Marta, of a wealthy Jewish family in 1939, in Czechoslovakia. We watch as their lives slowly crumble from rich and popular to shunned by their friends and their assets swept up by the Nazis. Using the Governess, or nanny, of the Bauers’ child to tell the story is brilliant. She is effectively impartial to the goings on and offers a plain and brutal account of the betrayals that surround her.

The plot of the novel winds through many difficult times for Pavel and Anneliese Bauer and their son, Pepik. The family, desperate to avoid the Nazis flee to Prague and even attempt to run for the Border to France at one point and of course we are standing at the sidelines helpless as we watch characters we’re growing to love fight the atrocities of our past.

And we do grow to love the family, despite their flaws. Marta is a confused character who at first doesn’t know where her own alliances lay. Pavel is a gullible man who believes passionately that the situation with the Nazis will just blow over and Anneliese begins waving everything off and hiding behind her wealth. Therein lays the wonder of the book, in that fragile characters are often the most endearing. By the end of the book my natural anger at the past grew vastly as I read about these people suffer.

Then of course there is Pepik, the central point of the novel. Everything that the adults around him are working towards is for him and his safety. It is in his story that we read about this small boy who is helpless to his family’s fate and ultimately is placed on a train to Scotland and never sees his parents again.

It’s an uncomfortable and emotionally stirring read. Alison Pick deals with the travesties of the past with care and thought, but never shies away from the core issues that the Jews faced. I’m not afraid to admit the anger that I felt while reading, nor that I had to move to another room towards the end for fear of the tears falling. It’s a story that is wonderfully written and that will leave you thinking about the characters for days after.

My only major gripe is the ending, which feels out of place. It doesn’t sit well next to such a great story. Using a different tact to tell the story’s finale I felt robbed of the experience built up by the rest of the novel. Despite that, it’s certainly an interesting twist.

Then we arrive at the comparison. I really enjoyed reading Half Blood Blues but after reading Far To Go I felt that this novel dealt with its issues with more skill and care. The characters are stronger, they have more heart, spark more passion from the reader. I’m quite gutted that Alison Pick’s novel didn’t make the Booker shortlist. I’m a sucker for novels based during the World Wars, but, I would love this book even if I wasn’t.

Available now from Headline. Paperback – 314 pages, Fiction, Kindly sent by the publisher.

Ward Perrin/Postmedia News

Last year, Canadian authors Lisa Moore and Emma Donoghue were named to the Man Booker Prize longlist — a good showing by all counts.

This year, Canada has done one better.

Canadian authors Alison Pick, Patrick deWitt, and Esi Edugyan have all been named to the 2011 Man Booker Prize longlist, which was revealed in London on Tuesday.

Alison Pick is the author of Far To Go, published in Canada by House of Anansi (and by Headline Review in the UK), which tells the story of a secular Jewish Czech family living in the shadow of Nazi Germany; Patrick deWitt is the author of The Sisters Brothers, also published by House of Anansi (and Granta in the UK), the tale of two cowboy assassins tasked with tracking down a gold prospector with a secret; Esi Edugyan is the author of Half Blood Blues, forthcoming from Thomas Allen, about a black German Jazz musician who disappears from occupied Paris. It was published in the UK by Serpent’s Tail earlier this year.

The other ten nominees are:

Julian Barnes for The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape – Random House)
Sebastian Barry for On Canaan’s Side (Faber)
Carol Birch for Jamrach’s Menagerie (Canongate Books)
Yvvette Edwards for A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
Alan Hollinghurst for The Stranger’s Child (Picador – Pan Macmillan)
Stephen Kelman for Pigeon English (Bloomsbury)
Patrick McGuinness for The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
A.D. Miller for Snowdrops (Atlantic)
Jane Rogers for The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
D.J. Taylor for Derby Day (Chatto & Windus – Random House)

This year’s jury is chaired by Dame Stella Rimington, an author and former Director-General of intelligence agency MI5; rounding out the jury are writer and journalist Matthew d’Ancona, author Susan Hill, author and politician Chris Mullin, and Gaby Wood, author and Head of Books at the Daily Telegraph. In total, they considered 138 books for this year’s prize.

“We are delighted by the quality and breadth of our longlist, which emerged from an impassioned discussion,” said Rimington in a statement. “The list ranges from the Wild West to multi-ethnic London via post-Cold War Moscow and Bucharest, and includes four first novels.”

The four debut novelists are Stephen Kelman, A.D. Miller, Yvvette Edwards and Patrick McGuinness. At the other end of the spectrum is Alan Hollinghurst, who won the prize in 2004 for The Line of Beauty and was also shortlisted in 1994; Sebastian Barry, who was shortlisted in 2005 and 2008; and Julian Barnes, who was shortlisted in 1984, 1998, and  2005. Will the fourth time be the charm?

In terms of the Canadian nominees, Alison Pick is probably the best-known of the three; the Toronto-based author has published two collections of poetry, as well as a previous novel, 2005′s The Sweet Edge. Although Far To Go was well-received when it was published last year, it was not nominated for any of Canada’s major prizes.

“I think the further you go in a writing career the more you realize there’s talent and then there’s also luck and politics,” she said on the phone from her cottage in Quebec. “The frustrating thing — well, frustrating or happy depending on what side of the equation you’re on — is that prize lists affect book sales so, so dramatically. I think the book-buying public is probably not aware of how important those lists are. I was saying to my husband this morning, I’m so happy for that exact reason — that it’s going to bring more readers to the book. It’s a book I just had such a great time writing, and a book that I’m really proud of.”

Interestingly, Pick mentioned that the first two pages of the UK edition of the book — which was the version read by the jury — differs from its Canadian counterpart.

Patrick deWitt, a native of Vancouver Island who currently lives in Portland, is the author of one previous novel, 2009′s Ablutions, and also wrote the screenplay for Terri, which recently opened in theatres. He said he stumbled down to his computer Tuesday morning only to be greeted by a flurry of excited e-mails.

“Honestly, it’s not really something I’d considered, in terms of my work,” he admitted, on the phone from Portland. “I guess I think of my work as bit left-of-center. Maybe not inclusive enough, I guess, to be considered for a prize of that size. But I’m very happy with the decision. The response to The Sisters Brothers has been so lovely across the board, and this really tops it all.”

Esi Edugyan, who is from originally from Calgary but now calls Victoria home, is the author of The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, which was published in 2004. An interesting note: Half Blood Blues was supposed to be published by Key Porter Books until the company shuttered earlier this year.

The shortlist for this year’s prize will be announced on September 6, while the winner will be revealed on October 18. The winner of the Man Booker Prize receives £50,000 (approximately $77,000).

Last year’s winner was Howard Jacobson for The Finkler Question.

Canadians to win the prize include Michael Ondaatje (in 1992, for The English Patient), Margaret Atwood (in 2000, for The Blind Assassin) and Yann Martel (in 2002, for Life of Pi).

Book description

When Czechoslovakia relinquishes the Sudetenland to Hitler, the powerful influence of Nazi propaganda sweeps through towns and villages like a sinister vanguard of the Reich’s advancing army. A fiercely patriotic secular Jew, Pavel Bauer is helpless to prevent his world from unraveling as first his government, then his business partners, then his neighbors turn their back on his affluent, once-beloved family. Only the Bauers’ adoring governess, Marta, sticks by Pavel, his wife, Anneliese, and their little son, Pepik, bound by her deep affection for her employers and friends. But when Marta learns of their impending betrayal at the hands of her lover, Ernst, Pavel’s best friend, she is paralyzed by her own fear of discovery—even as the endangered family for whom she cares so deeply struggles with the most difficult decision of their lives.

Interwoven with a present-day narrative that gradually reveals the fate of the Bauer family during and after the war, Far to Go is a riveting family epic, love story, and psychological drama.

Thanks bunches to Alison for the book donation. http://www.alisonpick.com/

• This auction will run from today until 11:59 pm Est June 5th and is open to North America.
• All bids will be in Canadian funds.
• Bids must increase by at least a dollar.

For Canadian author and poet Alison Pick, it was her personal journey of discovering and reclaiming her Jewish identity that led to her greatest professional success. The 35-year-old recently won the 2010 Canadian Jewish Book Award for fiction, being presented May 30 in Toronto, for her historical novel, “Far to Go,” about a Czechoslovakian Jewish family on the eve of World War II. Available last fall in Canada, the book was published this spring in Italy, the Netherlands, the U.K., and the U.S. Following many positive reviews, it was listed as one of the 10 best books of 2010 in The Toronto Star and NOW Magazine, and named among the top 40 books of the decade by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Pick recently spoke with The Arty Semite from her home in Toronto, where she lives with her husband and young daughter, about how the revealing of family secrets and her decision to embrace Judaism informed her creative process.

Click here to read the interview with Alison Pick.

© 2011 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

“I was the lucky writer nobody likes to hear about. I wrote a manuscript, it won an award. The award got me published. Point finale.

Looking back, I know how lucky I was. In fact, the farther I go in my literary career the more grateful I am for that first award. It wasn’t very big. There was almost no money involved. And yet it got my foot in the most marvelous door. I’ve been in the room ever since.

From this vantage point it’s easy to give advice, as though there’s a step-by-step guide to getting published, when in fact I know some excellent writers who have never seen their work in print, and some mediocre ones who have. The truth is that, along with hard work and talent, there’s always a bit of magic in the equation.

Still, though, I have always been eager to hear other writer’s thoughts on this subject, and in case anyone else feels similarly, here are mine.

The first might sound obvious, but wait until your manuscript is as absolutely perfect as you can make it before you send it out. Show a rough draft to your writing group, sure, or your mother-in-law or your best friend’s cousin, but do not send it to an agent in hopes that she will see the promise in it. She won’t. She’s too busy. And so are the publishers. It is your job as the writer to protect your book—think of it as a baby if it helps—from the world. You have to nurture it before you send it off, and make sure it is rock solid. Compelling. Unforgettable.

And how, you might ask, do you get your manuscript into this state?

This is the fun part.

Start at the beginning, and read. A lot. Every genre, all writers, as widely as possible. At the same time, write. Diaries, book reviews, love letters, short stories. This often comes as a surprise to emerging writers, who want (like I did) to be good right away. But only by practicing one’s craft does one get better.

Once you have written something you love, find someone you trust and show them your work. Let me underscore the importance of finding the right person here. Emerging writers—well, let’s be honest, all writers—are vulnerable, and even the slightest bit of misguided criticism can have dire consequences. Only when you’re sure this person has your best interests at heart should you let them read your draft. Before you do, tell them what kind of feedback you are after. Ask them for tangible ways to improve.

The next step is to go back and edit according to their suggestions, and to your own intuitions.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Oh, and one more thing. Turn off Facebook! And Twitter. And your email too, if you can muster the courage. The internet is a wonderful way to engage with a community of other writers, but the real work of writing has to happen alone.”

Thank you so much for stopping by here on your blog tour, Alison!

If you’d like to visit some of the other stops on Alison’s blog tour, see the sidebar to the right or stop by High Heels and Book Deals, where Alison was yesterday, or She Reads Novels, where she’ll be tomorrow. 

Click here for Alison’s website or here for Far To Go on Facebook. 

Check back this afternoon for my review of Far To Go.

(from Far to Go, page 13 in the ARC)

As I turned the last page and brushed away a few tears, I realized how deeply affected I was by Alison Pick’s newest novel, Far to Go.  I was hooked from the first page, and I found it hard to pull myself away from it for all those necessary tasks — work, housekeeping, and even sleep.  Far to Go is one of those novels that you read holding your breath; you know the bottom is going to fall out from under you at some point, but you just can’t stop reading.

In Far to Go, Pick tells the story of a Jewish family and their Gentile governess, Marta,  just before the outbreak of World War II from Marta’s point of view.  After the annexation of Austria, Hitler sets his sights on Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, where Marta lives with Paval and Anneliese Bauer and their son, Pepik.  Marta doesn’t have a family, and despite being a servant, she loves Pepik as if he was her own, and she feels like part of the Bauer family.  Paval tells Marta his concerns about the Nazis taking his country, and Marta carries Anneliese’s darkest secret — and the two women are bound together, given that Anneliese suspects Marta is having an affair with Ernst, the Sudeten German who manages Paval’s factory.

When the Nazis take the Sudetenland and things for the Jews begin to change for the worse, Ernst tells Marta that she has to take sides, and even though she does things she later regrets that change the course of a family’s history, Marta’s loyalty remains with the Bauers — the only real family she has ever known.  Through Marta’s eyes, we see the Bauers relocate to Prague, and after the Nazi occupation of the city, scramble to escape the country.  We feel her desire to be loved and accepted as part of the family, her fears of abandonment, her guilt, and her confusion about the swiftly changing world under Hitler.

Along with the narrative from Marta’s point of view, Pick includes letters from the Bauers and others that reveal pieces of their story and a present-day narrative from the point of view of a narrator whose identity is revealed toward the end and sheds new light on the events that occurred in 1938-39 and the fate of the main characters.  Through this narrator, Pick also tells the story of the Kindertransport, in which families in England, Scotland, and elsewhere took in Jewish children to protect them from the evils being perpetrated in their native countries.

Pick’s writing is tight, beautifully conveying emotion in few words.  I became so involved in the lives of her characters, and as I watched their world fall apart, I felt a deep sadness in my chest.  It’s amazing how writing can hit you so hard, but even though Far to Go is fiction, I kept thinking about all the Jewish families who actually lived through what the Bauers and Marta experienced — people losing their family businesses, being forced to choose whether to keep their children close or send them away, not knowing who to trust.

Far to Go is a powerful novel about a painful part of our world’s history.  It’s about loyalty and family, love and loss, betrayal and guilt.  It’s about how a single action can change everything.  Most importantly, it’s about remembering and makes you wonder how many survivors of the Holocaust — especially children — had to piece together the story of their families and even their own existence before the war from letters and scant memories.  Pick’s novel is one that will stay with me for a long time and definitely will make my “best of” list for 2011.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for allowing me to participate in the blog tour for Far to Go. To follow the tour, click here.

Disclosure: I received a copy of Far to Go from HarperCollins for review purposes. I am an IndieBound affiliate and an Amazon associate.

© 2011 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.

Aaron Lynett/National Post

Alison Pick’s novel Far to Go, about a Jewish Czech family in the months preceding World War Two, and Moredcai: The Life and Times, Charles Foran’s biography of the late Canadian novelist, are among the winners of the 2011 Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Awards, it was announced on Thursday.

Pick won in the Fiction category, while Foran won in Biography and Memoir. Tarek Fatah won the award for Politics and History for The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism. Robert Eli Rubinstein won in the Holocaust Literature category for An Italian Renaissance: Choosing Life In Canada while Harold Troper’s The Defining Decade: Identity, Politics, and the Canadian Jewish Community in the 1960s won for Scholarship. The winner of the Youth Literature category was Judie Oron for Cry of the Giraffe.

“This year’s six award-winning books truly reflect the impact Jewish culture has had on all aspects of Canadian society,” said Edward Trapunski, who chaired a jury featuring Adam Fuerstenberg, Marjorie Gann, Judith Ghert, Alain Goldschläger, Sara Horowitz, Judy Stoffman, Edward Trapunski, and Judy Wolfe.

The winners will receive their awards at a ceremony on May 30 at the Toronto Reference Library.

I’m no Oprah but I feel like have it on good authority to recommend a good read and Far To Go is one of the best books that I have read in a long time.

Far To Go, by local Toronto author, Alison Pick is guaranteed to make you cry, question your beliefs, challenge your thinking and leave you breathless.  I promise!

Set in 1939 Czechoslovakia, wealthy textile merchants, Pavel and Annelise are faced with increasing anti-Semitism, as the political climate grows hostile for Jewish nationals.  Realizing their options for escape are limited they must decide whether to separate the family and place their young son on the kindertransport.  Their nightmare is made complicated by a twisted web of deceit, confliction and unconditional love.

It may sound like a familiar story but Pick’s characters are rich in complexity and achingly human.  Her writing left me feeling gutted by the painful loss that was a reality for many Jewish families during the Holocaust.

I had the opportunity to meet Pick when she attended our book club’s review of her novel, Far To Go. I gushed just like a schoolgirl meeting Justin Beiber.  But really, how could I not.  Just read this novel and this author’s raw talent will mesmerize you.

Why more people don’t know about this book saddens me.  It should be soaring bestsellers.  It should be sitting on Heather’s table of picks.  Oprah should be emphatically hollering, “You get a copy and you get a copy and you get a copy!”

As I often write, I am not a reviewer but merely a suggester.  Should you want to read a review of this book by some savvy book bloggers may I suggest Kerry Clare of Pickle Me This, Bibliomama, and Kevin From Canada.  If you prefer print media reviews, take a look at what The National Post and Globe and Mail have to say about this special book.

If you only read one book this year, make it this one!  Have you read Far To Go?  If so, what did you think?

Past Imperfect, by Suzanne Buffam
ISBN: 978-0-887-847-264 * $16.95

The recommender:

Alison Pick, author of Far to Go

Alison says:

The reconciling of opposites is one of Buffam’s many strengths, and is present in abundance in her first collection, Past Imperfect. The seen and the unseen, the emotive and the conceptual: Buffam places black and white next to each other, stands back and lets them shine. These poems negotiate contrast in content as well as in form by marrying the formal, cerebral aesthetic currently so fashionable with the feeling central to lyric in Canada in the past thirty years. We get a poetry that is beautifully measured, and rife with rhyme so skillful as to render itself invisible. We also get the big gasp.

ALISON PICK was the 2002 Bronwen Wallace Award winner for most promising unpublished writer under thirty-five in Canada. She has published two volumes of poetry and one previous novel, The Sweet Edge, which appeared to rave reviews and was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. After living for a number of years in St. John’s, Newfoundland, she now lives in Toronto, Ontario. Follow her on Twitter @alisonpick.

• Alison Pick’s Far to Go has been presented with the 2010 Words Worthy Award! This award is chosen by the staff of Words Worth Books to honour a book that has been overlooked by Canada’s major literary prizes. From the press release: “We are pleased to announce that in our estimation, Alison Pick’s second novel Far to Go is the finest work of Canadian fiction published in 2010.”
• The 2011 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award longlist has been announced — and we are proud to have two Anansi books among the 15 excellent Canadian books longlisted for the award. Congratulations to Lisa Moore (February) and Marie-Claire Blais (Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom)!

On the Groundwood side:

• Kirkus Reviews has released its 2010 Best Children’s Books list, and we are thrilled to be strongly represented with two Groundwood titles: Roslyn Rutabaga and the Biggest Hole on Earth! (Marie-Louise Gay) and Arroz con leche / Rice Pudding (written by Jorge Argueta and illustrated by Fernando Vilela)! Congratulations to the authors and illustrators.
• Playhouse Disney and Astral made a special announcement today: the Stella and Sam TV show, based on Marie-Lousie Gay‘s beloved books, will premiere on Sunday, January 9 at 10:30 a.m. EST! Read the full press release for more.
• Last, but most certainly not least: today is Gordon Lightfoot’s 72nd birthday! We’re celebrating by reading Gordon’s new book, Canadian Railroad Trilogy, a picture book/gift book that is lavishly illustrated by the brilliant and award-winning illustrator Ian Wallace. Happy Birthday, Gord!

Reviewed by Geraldine Sherman

Among readers of serious fiction, Jews and non-Jews, many cringe at the prospect of another novel centred on the Holocaust. Enough already, they moan. Is there anything new to be said? Move on, they urge. And yet. And yet.

By delicately tilting her observer’s mirror, Alison Pick glimpsed the outline of an original tale that could cast new light on old shadows — enough, I argue, that even the Holocaust-saturated will admit there’s room for more of these stories if their vantage point is well chosen.

We come to know the Bauers, Pavel and Annaliese, a proudly secular Jewish couple, their young son, Pavik, and the employees in their home and in their small garment factory. They are trapped, first in 1938 in a small Czech town as the Germans begin to take control, and a year later in Prague. Each has a unique reaction to the surrender of their country’s sovereignty and to their own diminishing lives.

Pavel, a Czech nationalist devoted to the liberal ideals of  Tomáš Masaryk, maintains confidence in the past while trying to ignore the present. “The only way to function here,” he advises, “is to base our actions on a belief of permanence.” Annaliese battles her husband’s denial and her own fears for their survival. She dresses in the latest Paris fashions and stocks her pantry with tinned sardines. Pepik, who is six, enjoys the solitary pleasure of his toy train and shares moments of joy with his beloved nanny, Marta, enacting characters from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The family’s unfortunate cook, Sophie, who has a harelip, welcomes the arrival of the Nazis who will “root out” the Jews. For once she might not feel inferior. Ernst, who manages the factory, is more subtle in his contempt, which makes his betrayal more devastating. Each reacts in ways that seem entirely true to their character as individuals and as creatures of their own class.

Marta, the child of an abusive peasant family, is most transformed by the hatred bubbling up around her. She had been welcomed in the Bauer household to mind Pepik, whom she loves with a mother’s intensity. As an obedient, silent observer, she witnesses every domestic drama and is privy to its sometimes bloody consequences. She proves an ally of the Bauers and a keeper of their secrets until, through her own innocence, she exposes those she loves most.

To try to make amends for her guilt, she casts the deciding vote that forces Pepik to safety but out of her life forever. The author makes us understand that she’s not one of the celebrated “righteous Gentiles”: She’s merely another victim whose small act of atonement will never allow her to forgive herself for one mistake.

Narrating part of the story is a woman who lives in Montreal, a contemporary scholar of the Kindertransport. She has some personal connection to the Bauers that might be intended to surprise the reader but perhaps is too easily anticipated. We know that Pepik boarded one of the sealed trains that brought 10,000 Jewish children to Britain between December, 1938, and September, 1939. Some were placed with welcoming families, some housed in supervised communal settings, some dropped into more hostile environments. From the increasingly desperate letters sent by Pepik’s parents but never received, we know that his life was saved but unexpectedly altered. And that, in his absence, the relationship between Marta and Pavel grew closer.

Pick wrote an earlier novel and several books of poetry. You might expect a few narrative arabesques; instead there are prosaic pratfalls, tired metaphors and similes, many involving fruit. A group of teenagers are “clustered together like grapes,” something inside of Marta hardens “like the pit at the centre of a piece of summer fruit” and then tightens “like the lid on a Mason jar.” Her story deserves more careful language.

Pick’s father’s parents were assimilated Jews who fled Czechoslovakia in 1941, settled in Canada and converted to Christianity. In the course of writing this novel, the author converted to Judaism. In an interview she said: “Originally, the impetus was to connect to all these beautiful traditions that had been lost. It felt like a good fit. It was very organic.” So the Holocaust persists in the literary imagination and through the refining fire of fiction a new generation confronts its own version of what it means to be human.