Do we need one more book that recounts the detailed horrors of the Holocaust? If you are young and haven't been exposed to them, perhaps. If you are in midlife and have seen more than one movie or read one book on the Holocaust, you already know the depravity and psychosis of Nazis. Which makes me wonder if her detailing of the horrors are gratuitous.

Aside from that, the plot was such that I spent almost the whole book basically waiting for something bad to happen to her so her husband would feel like an idiot for not validating and understanding her fears.

She is a good writer and I enjoyed the quality of the writing, but not enough to overcome these two shortcomings. I would however, read her next book.

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Dina, an Australian and the daughter of Holocaust survivors, now lives in Haifa, Israel. Married to an Israeli, she has a young son and is pregnant with her second child. She is a doctor, and practices medicine in her own clinic. We follow her for one day, a day on which a bomb warning has been issued, as she moves through her day accompanied by and constantly interacting with the ghost of her critical mother.

I found the novel to be unconvincing. I simply could not believe that Dina was a real person in the real world. Or maybe, if she is a real person, she is a person teetering on the brink of insanity, not the competent professional she is purported to be.

She spends much of her day talking to and interacting with the ghost of her mother. People around her observing this (and some did) were constantly saying , "Excuse me?", and she would come up with some excuse/explanation for her behavior. In my world, she would have been sent for a mental evaluation. Also, Dina was supposedly a dedicated physician, but she spent most of her morning avoiding going to the clinic, though her receptionist phoned her to tell her patients are waiting. Then, during the short time she is in the clinic she also avoids her patients, and soon skips out for more wandering around the city.

Perhaps this was the point--the unreality of it all. I just didn't buy it.

1 1/2 stars ( )

I was very intrigued when I read the summary for this book. I enjoy stories in the WWII era. When I started reading this book I was fine with it. Yet, the more I read I realized that I was more like an outsider attempting to look in. What I mean by this is that I was not connected to Dina or her parents' history. I felt that Dina's voice was monotone. It did not have any energy or was a loud voice. I understand part of this had to do with Dina's struggles but still I tried to find some connection with Dina and the story as a whole but could not. This is one book that did not leave me waiting for more. ( )

3.5. "She was determined to find the document that would reveal
she was someone else's child, desperate to prove that she had
been born unstudied, rather than carry the dark pages of her
parents' life in her veins."

I usually don't start a review with a quote but I believe this quote sums up much about this novel.
The day in the life of Dina, married with one child, another on the way, married and a doctor herself. Now living in Haifa, Israel where bomb warnings have been posted. The threat of violence in a place she had believed safe with continue the unraveling she experienced after living with her very vocal Holocaust survivor mother. Even though dead, her mother and her words linger on.

A difficult book, but a pertinent one on the later effects of the next generation born to those who had already experienced horror and violence. How it is to live with a fear of the violence that is always present, always possible. This is also difficult because of the way it is presented. Well written though it is, the back and forth in memories, the scattered thoughts of the character herself made this read less than easy. Giving a spectral vision to her unraveling could be disconcerting, yet this book does convey an important message and even though the Holocaust has ended, its effects linger on and so does the fear so many experience living in violent ridden countries today.

ARC from publisher. ( )

A short book the spans one day in the life of Dina, an expat-Melbournite doctor living in Haifa with her husband and child, but haunted by the tragedies her parents lived through in the holocaust. The book wrestles with the migrant experience, the conflict in the Middle East (although there is little sympathy or humanity given to the Palestinian perspective) and the lingering impacts of trauma. ( )