Life of a Jewish family in Slovakia in the 1930s and 1940s during the disintegration of the multi-ethnic Czechoslovakian state. Covers subjects of national borders, Sudeten Germans, war refugees and displaced people.
Excerpt
Wilhelm with his good looks could have his pick of the girls and his eyes were clearly set on Greta, which secretly made Jonah a very proud father.
“Does he not mind you being Jewish, that German book boy?” Jonah asked her one evening over dinner.
“I am not sure he even knows yet,” Greta told him. “The way he talks about the Jews, it doesn’t seem to have any reference to me at all.”
“How does he talk about the Jews?” Jonah said with raised eyebrows.
“He just mentions them in passing, like… so and so is a Jew so we do not have his books in our shop. I don’t think he has an opinion about it himself,” Greta guessed.
“But the name Weissensteiner, that is a Jewish name! He must know,” insisted Jonah. “I often wished we could have changed that. It would make life easier, wouldn’t it?”
“It only sounds Jewish to you because you know that it is,” disagreed Greta. “It could pass as a German name to a naïve young man, which I think Wilhelm just might be.”
“In that case you should bring the matter up soon before this ‘book lending’ goes any further,” Jonah lectured.
“He seems very smitten with you my darling daughter. It wouldn’t hurt to get it out of the way before you waste any more of your time on him or any of his time on you, unless of course you were only in it for the books?”
“No I am not just in it for the books father,” she admitted. “I like him. I think I really like him. He is very interesting. He thinks a lot.”
“Oh he thinks a lot does he?” Jonah said with a little sarcasm in his voice. “Then it is important that he learns to do something as well, thinking alone will only give him a headache.”
“Do you like him father?” Greta asked, ignoring his previous statement.
“Does it matter if I like him? You must like the goy and make sure he does not mind your family,” her father warned. “I’ll like him enough if he makes you happy; even if he thinks all day until his head hurts. If a thinker you want, a thinker you shall have. You have the pick of the men, my beautiful. Trust me. Make sure you chose a good man and that you do really like him.”
“I do like him, father. He seems such a gentle man from what I can tell from our short meetings but I still need to get to know him better,” she admitted.
“You take as long as you like to make up your mind. I hope you realise that he has already made up his mind about you. It is written all over his face how enchanted he is. He could accuse you of playing with him if you let him visit this often and your decision is not the one he hopes for. You must not lead him on. Be careful, you know, because I don’t think we need to wait much longer for a proposal from this one.”
“I am not so sure. There are plenty of girls who make eyes at him, maybe he just loves talking about books. That could be all he wants from me,” Greta said more to herself than to her father.
“Yes, if you were a fifty year old librarian that probably would be all,” Jonah said with a roaring laugh. “Why is he not content talking about his Goethe with the old men in his book shop then? I tell you why, they are not his type. Always remember that men of his young age mainly think with their loins. Once they have satisfied such needs, they may not be interested in your views on books anymore and go back to the shop to discuss literature there. An attractive girl like yourself always needs to choose wisely.”
“I don’t think he is like that, he is so serious,” Greta defended.
“Yes he is serious, the Germans often are. Now let’s hope his seriousness is good for something and makes him worthy of you,” Jonah laughed.
Professional Reviews
Impressive read
The Luck of the Weissensteiners by Christoph Fischer is a book I’d been anxious to read for some time now, and it actually took me a few days after I’d finished to get this review up. The book is about Greta, a romantically minded daughter of a Jewish weaver living in Bratislava 1933. From the date, city and religion alone you can immediately guess that this book isn’t going to be your typical curl up with a blanket on a rainy day romance.
Greta falls in love with a bookseller, and from there the story takes off in into what many of us have read about as an achingly painful history. Truthfully I don’t want to give any of the book away, so I’m keeping the description of the events short. It’s worth reading on so many levels, and I can only hope to impress that upon future readers of this work.
The depth of the characters is amazing, the writing tight and beautiful, the emotion behind the words makes you feel like you’re right there along with them, which is a testament to Fischer’s absolute skill with the written word.
I’m giving this book an amazing five of five stars, and I highly recommend that you pick this book up and give it a read. I expect we’re going to be seeing great things out of Fischer in the coming years, if this book is anything to go by. I can’t wait to see more of his works!
Epic read
Christoph Fischer's The Luck of the Weissensteiners , was an epic and impressive read. The amount of research the author must have put into writing this story was evident by the well thought out and described times in time when geography was redirected by reigns of terror in Germany, in Russia, in the hearts of others that could watch nations of peoples, families torn apart and displaced. What starts out as a love story, a metaphor beginning in the spring of a young couple lives moves into the dark themes of our human shadow, where love turns to distrust and betrayal.
This is a story of intolerance at its worst, but is also a story of the strength of the human spirit to help and do good at great risk. While parts were too overly narrative for my taste the story and oppression of the time were never lost on the read, which kept me involved in this story, that by the time I was half way into the story I wanted to take time off to sit and finish it, to find out what happened to all the characters in their struggle to escape and survive. Sadly, like all of life there is much sorrow and loss, reality, but there is also survival and hope. I will not forget this read for a while to come.
First review
From the moment that Greta Weissensteiner enters the bookstore where Wilhelm Winkelmeier works, and entrances him with her good looks and serious ways, I was hooked. But this is no ordinary romance; in tact it is not a romance at all, but a powerful, often sad, Holocaust story. What makes The Luck of the Weissensteiners so extraordinary is the chance Christoph Fischer gives his readers to consider the many different people who were never in concentration camps, never in the military, yet who nonetheless had their own indelible Holocaust experiences. Set in the fascinating area of Bratislava, this is a wide-ranging, historically accurate exploration of the connections between social location, personal integrity and, as the title says, luck. I cared about every one of this novel's characters and continued to think about them long after I'd finished reading.
-- Andrea Steiner, University of California Santa Cruz
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