I read these two books close in time to each other and remarked at some of their interesting similarities and differences as I read them. So I thought I might write a review of them together to explore some of those qualities for your benefit.
Both novels are about the experiences of Jewish women before, during and after the scourge of anti-Semitism, brought to its extremes by the Hitler regime in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s. Both are also stories about family bonds, tradition, and love–romantic and otherwise.
21 Aldgate is the East End London address of the family home that is the central location for the action in the eponymous novel. Its main character is Clara Simon, a young married Jewish woman who lives at this address with her husband, parents, sisters, and brother-in-law. Yes, it’s a rather large extended family, so there are lots of subplots. But the main storyline is about Clara’s evolution over a period of several years. At the start of the novel, she resigns from her support staff position at a law firm in protest over her boss’s treatment of Jewish clients.
Realizing that she has obligations to provide financial support to her family, Clara takes advantage of a friend’s recommendation to interview for a position as an assistant for the artist Paul Maze, a Frenchman living in Chelsea. She takes the job and through it enters into a world she would never otherwise have imagined. For among Mr. Maze’s regular visitors is Winston Churchill, who soon comes to recognize the young woman’s intelligence and courage.
Paul Maze was a real person, whose memoirs of his experiences during World War I were published as A Frenchman in Khaki. Clara’s work for Maze primarily entails taking notes as he talks about his experiences and transcribing them into the narrative that later became this book. As a visual artist, he is not at all inclined to undertake this activity in any kind of disciplined way, so Clara gets to assert herself in creating the time and space needed to make this happen.
But he and Churchill decide that she can handle other assignments, as well. She and Paul attend a soirée hosted by one of the aristocrats favoring appeasement of the Nazis. She travels to France with Maze to take notes as he uses place to stimulate his memories of some of his experiences. Together they also travel to Munich: Paul to gather intelligence for Churchill, Clara to search for her aunt. And yes, they fall in love.
But remember, Clara is married. So is Paul Maze, although he at least is separated from his wife. So eventually, their paths diverge. The novel includes several chapters that follow their lives after their time together.
Clara was Patricia Friedberg’s mother, who died at the age of 99. So while some of the thoughts and actions in 21 Aldgate are indeed fiction, there is a strong element of reality present throughout. That and the integrity of all the main characters makes 21 Aldgate a standout.
Alas, for me, The Oriental Wife simply paled in comparison to 21 Aldgate. This is in part because it is less tightly bound to real historical persons and events, and in part because its main character just wasn’t very appealing to me. The opening chapter introduces Louisa, her cousin Otto, and their friend Rolf as Jewish children growing up in Germany during and in the years immediately following World War I. An only child, Louisa’s mother Jeannette suffers from a mental illness that looks like a form of major depression.
In part to shield her from her mother but also to enable her to learn other languages, Louisa’s lawyer father Franz sends her off to a boarding school in Switzerland. Already an adolescent, Louisa develops a crush on Julian, her friend Celia’s moody brother, and convinces her father to send her to England to study art history in order to be closer to Julian. She lives in a boarding house, takes classes, and has rather unpleasant, furtive sexual encounters with Julian. When her father is no longer able to send money to her (remember what kinds of restrictions the Hitler regime imposed on Jews), she finds employment as a governess. By then she’s broken off with Julian and taken up with another moody man, a poet named Phillip, who decides he wants to marry her.
With the promise of marriage still unfulfilled, Louisa travels to America with Phillip. But by then, they are already not getting along very well, so it’s really no surprise when he dumps her in New York City. Fortunately, her cousin Otto and childhood friend Rolf are living in New York, and they take her in. In rather short order Louisa and Rolf marry. He works for an agency that is attempting to make arrangements for Jews to emigrate to the United States from Germany, and he succeeds in obtaining papers for Louisa’s parents, who arrive in New York in 1939.
When the United States enters World War II in late 1941, Rolf is unable to enlist for medical reasons. He channels his frustration into his involvement in the émigré community, which also seems to be Louisa’s primary social outlet during this time. As the war in Europe is winding down, Louisa becomes pregnant. It is a very difficult pregnancy, made more so because Louisa has a benign but still troublesome brain tumor that is surgically removed shortly after her daughter Emma is born. The surgery leaves her disfigured, partially paralyzed and blind, experiencing some mood disruptions that may be an echo of her mother’s condition.
All of this has happened halfway through the book. The rest is the increasingly sad and difficult dénouement of Louisa and Rolf’s lives after this event. From this point forward, the story of these individuals eclipses any historical events of significance. I found these intensely personal troubles almost too depressing to bear. I struggled to finish The Oriental Wife.
(Rainbow Books, 2010)
(Other Press, 2011)
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