From School Library Journal
Potok returns with three novellas linked by a single character, Ilana Davita Dinn, whose life experiences carry us from the Holocaust to the Kremlin's doctor's plot to the quieter terrors of old age. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Potok returns with three novellas linked by a single character, Ilana Davita Dinn, whose life experiences carry us from the Holocaust to the Kremlin's doctor's plot to the quieter terrors of old age.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Potok's latest book is a collection of three novellas that share a character, Ilana Davita Dinn, and the theme of the effects of war on men's lives. In "The Ark Builder," which takes place the summer before she begins college, Ilana begins to teach English to a young boy, Noah, who has survived the Holocaust. He tells Ilana the story of how he and his brother helped an old man build an ark in a synagogue. In the second story, Ilana is hardly present at all; a former KGB officer leaves her the story of his life in written form. Leon Shertov, a Russian Jew who fought the Germans in World War II, is treated by a dignified doctor who saves his arm from amputation. Later, under Stalin, the doctor who helped him years ago is jailed. Finally, in "The Troupe Teacher," Ilana, now a writer, coaxes a disturbing story out of Benjamin Walter, a professor of warfare. A moving and powerful book from a writer whose first novel, The Chosen, is still widely read and loved. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Old Men at Midnight FROM THE PUBLISHER
From the Celebrated Author of The Chosen and My Name Is Asher Lev, a trilogy of related novellas about a woman whose life touches three very different men -- stories that encompass some of the profoundest themes of the twentieth century. Ilana Davita Dinn is the listener to whom three men relate their lives. As a young girl, she offers English lessons to a teenage survivor of the camps. In "The Ark Builder," he shares with her the story of his friendship with a proud old builder of synagogue arks, and what happened when the German army invaded their Polish town.
As a graduate student, she finds herself escorting a guest lecturer from the Soviet Union, and in "The War Doctor," her sympathy moves him to put his painful past to paper recounting his experiences as a Soviet NKVD agent who was saved by an idealistic doctor during the Russian civil war, only to encounter him again during the terrifying period of the Kremlin doctors' plot.
And, finally, we meet her in "The Trope Teacher," in which a distinguished professor of military history, trying to write his memoirs, is distracted by his wife's illness and by the arrival next door of a new neighbor, the famous writer I. D. (Ilana Davita) Chandal. Poignant and profound, Chaim Potok's newest fiction is a major addition to his remarkable -- and remarkably loved -- body of work.
FROM THE CRITICS
Book Magazine
Potok's novel is only briefly about old men at midnight. It's actually a collection of three linked novellas, all of which feature an inquisitive Jewish woman named Ilana Davita Dinn. In "The Ark Builder," an eighteen-year-old Ilana tutors a terrified concentration camp survivor fresh to New York from Poland. "The Trope Teacher" concerns a famous academic who becomes obsessed by the arrival next door of the famous novelist I.D. Chandal (actually Ilana). The most engrossing of these stories is "The War Doctor," in which Ilana is a young teacher at Columbia University who becomes involved with a recent KGB defector, Leon Shertov. Fascinated by Shertov's life, Ilana pesters him for details and written notes, which he steadfastly refuses to give. Later, a thick manuscript—his painful, riveting life story—appears in her mailbox. Potok never reveals much about Ilana, and her passivity seems a mere device that allows the author to spin tales of the people with whom she comes into contact. The stories themselves are masterfully written. This delicately realized book about history and memory is shot through with flashes of humanity. —Chris Barsanti
Publishers Weekly
The ninth novel from Potok (The Chosen; My Name Is Asher Lev; etc.) is actually a series of three linked novellas, all of which vividly examine the horrors of war. The link is a woman, Ilana Davita Dinn, to whom three different men tell their stories. In "The Ark Builder," Davita, just out of high school in Brooklyn, gives English lessons to 16-year-old Noah Stremin in 1947. The only Jew from his Polish town to survive the Holocaust, he slowly opens up to Davita, telling her of his friendship with Reb Binyomin, the caretaker of his village's synagogue. As a graduate student in "The War Doctor," Davita encourages visiting lecturer Leon Shertov to write about his experiences under Stalin. A young soldier in World War I, Leon was saved by a Jewish doctor, whom he secretly taught to read Hebrew. Later, Leon became a KGB interrogator, and after World War II, he encounters the doctor again this time as a prisoner, a victim of Stalin's paranoid campaign against physicians. Finally Davita, now a successful author herself, befriends renowned history professor Benjamin Walter as he struggles to write his memoirs. She helps him to remember such pivotal events as his adolescent tutelage under Mr. Zapiski, who served in World War I with his father, as well as his own experiences in World War II. The stories Potok's men tell as they "roar with rage against the void" are as moving as they are riveting. Unfortunately, Davita's role as confessor reduces her to little more than a cipher, and it seems a mistake to have her narrate the first story (Potok at no point sounds like a 17-year-old girl). But "The War Doctor," the grimmest and most nuanced of the stories, alone is worth the price of admission.(Oct. 23) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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