The Lost Family

Summary (from the publisher): The New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us creates a vivid portrait of marriage, family, and the haunting grief of World War II in this emotionally charged, beautifully rendered story that spans a generation, from the 1960s to the 1980s

In 1965 Manhattan, patrons flock to Masha’s to savor its brisket bourguignon and impeccable service and to admire its dashing owner and head chef Peter Rashkin. With his movie-star good looks and tragic past, Peter, a survivor of Auschwitz, is the most eligible bachelor in town. But Peter does not care for the parade of eligible women who come to the restaurant hoping to catch his eye. He has resigned himself to a solitary life. Running Masha’s consumes him, as does his terrible guilt over surviving the horrors of the Nazi death camp while his wife, Masha—the restaurant’s namesake—and two young daughters perished.

Then exquisitely beautiful June Bouquet, an up-and-coming young model, appears at the restaurant, piercing Peter’s guard. Though she is twenty years his junior, the two begin a passionate, whirlwind courtship. When June unexpectedly becomes pregnant, Peter proposes, believing that beginning a new family with the woman he loves will allow him to let go of the horror of the past. But over the next twenty years, the indelible sadness of those memories will overshadow Peter, June, and their daughter Elsbeth, transforming them in shocking, heartbreaking, and unexpected ways.

Jenna Blum artfully brings to the page a husband devastated by a grief he cannot name, a frustrated wife struggling to compete with a ghost she cannot banish, and a daughter sensitive to the pain of both her own family and another lost before she was born. Spanning three cinematic decades, The Lost Family is a charming, funny, and elegantly bittersweet study of the repercussions of loss and love.

 

Review: I received an uncorrected proof copy of this novel from HarperCollins.

 

Opening in 1965 Manhattan, this novel follows Peter, a survivor of Auschwitz who has reinvented himself as owner and head chef of his fashionable restaurant, Masha's. Peter throws himself into the restaurant to try to fill the void left by the death of his wife Masha - the restaurant's namesake - and his two young daughters. However, meeting the young and beautiful model June Bouquet sets Peter on a passionate romance. When June becomes pregnant, they end up getting married. Yet Peter's past and the unresolved loss of his first family casts a shadow on Peter, June, and their daughter Elsbeth that shake the family's foundations decades after the end of the war that first destroyed Peter's life.

 

Told in three sections, this novel spans three decades. Each section is told from a different perspective, which is fitting since the family members feel isolated and cordoned off from each other in many ways. "There was a door closed in Peter that June could never open, as much as she'd tried; it was in all the things she couldn't say and he couldn't talk about; in memories of atrocities and tenderness June could never comprehend" (171). One of the strongest aspects of this novel are the richly complex characters. In addition, the author does a great job of showing rather than telling and jumping in time without simply narrating everything that has happened since we last saw the family. In each section, the characters will reference events and history that happened off stage, making the family dynamics feel realistically complex.

 

A major theme of this novel is food and the consumption of it. From Peter's starvation in Auschwitz to his creations as a chef and insistence on the best food, to June's birdlike diet as a model, to Elsbeth's own complicated relationship with food, the book is littered with references and scenes of food and meal preparation. While the breaking of bread together over shared family meals is traditionally seen as a time of family bonding and togetherness, for Peter, June, and Elsbeth, food and eating are complicated by each of their own individual histories and hang ups and food becomes a symbol of the familial discord.

 

One minor criticism: Sol's house is described as having "black-and-white portraits of street people, mostly, taken by - Peter peered at the signatures - Diane Arbus, Vivian Maier, Lisette Model. Peter had just started to hear of some of the names, floating around Masha's dining room in conjunction with exhibits" (60). While Vivian Maier is certainly now well known for her photography of street people, her work was unknown during her lifetime and her work was not discovered until after her death in 2009 so Sol would almost certainly not have had her work hanging in 1965, nor would Peter recognize her name. However, as this is a work of fiction, this is a minor discrepancy in the historical account.

 

This was an inventive take on a holocaust story. Blum has created complex and vivid characters that I found fascinating and poignantly illustrated that surviving the war was only the beginning of the story. Even in trying to rebuild and put the past behind them, the reverberations from the death of Masha and of Peter's daughters ultimately haunts the whole family. A thoughtful and thought provoking novel about family and loss, Blum has written a moving look at the difficulty of surviving great tragedy.

 

Stars: 4