A Jerusalem bombing results in the death of an unidentified forty-eight-year-old woman, after she has been comatose for two days. Unvisited at the hospital during the last days of her life, she remains, unmourned, in the local morgue for more than a week, until a pay stub finally traces her to the bakery where she worked. When an aggressive newspaper reporter breaks the story of the unmissed and unmourned employee, the bakery’s eighty-seven-year-old owner is both embarrassed by the publicity and furious at the story’s accusations that the woman was treated callously by the bakery’s management. For the owner, an apology on behalf of the company is not enough. He assigns the human resources manager to find out who the woman is so that “a more tangible expression of regret from himself and his staff, a clearly defined gesture” can be made on her behalf. Serious thematic questions arise: Who is responsible for Yulia in Jerusalem? She herself? Her employer? The people who knew and liked her? The government in Jerusalem? Her family back home? No one? And if she is not solely responsible for her own life, how much, if anything, does anyone else owe to her? With an ending that readers will celebrate for its perfection, Yehoshua brings the action, themes, and characters full circle. (On my Favorites List for 2006)
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Focusing on the period between 1956 and 1958, Matthew Brzezinski recreates the Cold War atmosphere which began in the aftermath of World War II and culminated with the Russian launching of Sputnik in October, 1957. Both the United States and the Soviet Union, in their rush to occupy their post-war sectors of Germany, had wanted to acquire as much German technology as possible—rockets, missiles, and, of course, the German scientists who made it all possible. The US had all the advantages—finding a secret missile lab (hidden in a mountain with a concentration camp in front of it), removing dozens of advanced rockets and missiles to the US, and enticing key scientists to emigrate to the United States. Still, it was the Soviet Union, with far fewer spoils of war and much less developed missile programs, which succeeded in orbiting the first satellite. Brzezinski’s extensive research, detailed character analyses of the key players and their subordinates, and vivid recreations of the economic and political realities of both countries increase the tension in the lead-up to Sputnik.
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Vivid and hard-edged, Dancer fuses fact and fiction seamlessly, successfully recreating the essence of a larger-than-life star like Rudolf Nureyev and illuminating the many secret worlds he inhabited. At the same time, Dancer also manages to capture the heart, making an unlikable egomaniac into an understandable human and his rise to stardom a goal the reader both shares and celebrates. His legs were the source of “more violence than grace,” and there was “more intuition in him than intellect, more spirit than knowledge.” In his first brief recital, he was filled with “kinetic fury,” and even when he reached the height of his powers, when much of the world regarded his dance partnership with famed ballerina Margot Fonteyn as both intimate and elegant, his style was also described by others as “ferocious.” Nureyev’s “wild and feral” style of dance meshes perfectly with McCann’s prose. Filled with intriguing characters, ranging from simple Russian peasants to Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams, John Lennon, Truman Capote, Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, and the stars of ballet, the novel is a monument to the power of the creative spirit and a testament to the dangers inherent in a life from which all other controls have been removed. (My favorite novel of 2003)
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