12/1/2015BookFilter | Evernote Web https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=1427854a-cb9c-4bea-be33-72d26470df67&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&1/4HomeTop Picks: All BooksThe Book of Aron MoreThe Book of Aronby Jim ShepardPrice: $23.95(Hardcover)Published: May 12, 2015Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)From the Publisher: The acclaimed National Book Award finalist—“one of the United States’ finest writers,” according to JoshuaFerris, “full of wit, humanity, and fearless curiosity”—now gives usa novel that will join the short list of classics about children caughtup in the Holocaust.Aron, the narrator, is an engaging if peculiar and unhappy youngboy whose family is driven by the German onslaught from thePolish countryside into Warsaw and slowly battered by deprivation,disease, and persecution.</p><p> He and a handful of boys and girls risktheir lives by scuttling around the ghetto to smuggle and tradecontraband through the quarantine walls in hopes of keeping theirfathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters alive, hunted all the while byblackmailers and by Jewish, Polish, and German police, not tomention the Gestapo.</p><p> When his family is finally stripped away from…Rate This Book|Rate/ReviewAdd To BookshelfGet This BookGo to your preferred retailer, click to choose a format and you' ll be taken directly to their site whereyou can get this book.BookFilter12/1/2015BookFilter | Evernote Web https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=1427854a-cb9c-4bea-be33-72d26470df67&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&2/4 Personalize / Add More ChoicesWhat We SayIt's funny! Yes, this is a story about a little boy who becomes a scavenger in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.Yes, it's bleak and awful as we see his world slowly close in, the walls go up, the family members die off ordisappear.</p><p> But in his saddest, sharpest novel yet, author Jim Shepard captures the vein of black humor that runsthrough the despair of the Jewish people.</p><p> The bickering of a husband and wife, the kvetching of the neighbors, thebleak wisdom of kids -- it's all here, all musical in the dialogue you can't help but speak out loud, all captivating andalive even as they slowly starve to death.</p><p> Aron is, I suppose, a survivor, a boy who just tries to stay one step aheadof fate. (Good luck with that.) Morality doesn't come into it, but he steals and scavenges and helps feed his familyand gets by.</p><p> Aron is almost deliriously unaware of any other way of existing; everyone is always saying "Aron onlylooks out for himself" but Shepard shows this boy in all his humanity, a kid wondering exactly what he was supposedto do when pushed by everyone into talking with the local collaborators or when he has a gun held to his head and istold to do this or that or the other.</p><p> He had a choice? Shepard's tale is bristling with tragic details -- Aron is alwayscrying, it seems -- but it's a joy to read.</p><p> One of the Warsaw Ghetto's tragic figures -- the child advocate JanuszKorczak -- figures prominently and beautifully, but like everyone else he is fully complex and contradictory and alive.The tale builds and builds but this isn't a story about what happens to Aron.</p><p> It's richer, more satisfying than that.You'll read it quickly and then want to read it again.</p><p> Unforgettable. -- Michael GiltzLessWhat Others Say“A masterpiece. . . a remarkable novel destined to join the shelf of essential Holocaust literature. . . . a story of suchstartling candor about the complexity of heroism that it challenges each of us to greater courage. . . .</p><p> Shepard hascreated something transcendent and timeless.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post“[Shepard’s] narrow perspective creates an uncanny tension and lets us feel the horror in a way that feels fresh andfreshly devastating. . . .</p><p> The Book of Aron doesn’t let you put it down, doesn’t let you stop reading until you get to theend [and] you’ve lived a lifetime with Aron—for better and for worse, you’ve done what he’s done and thought whathe’s thinking.” —Tony Perez, Tin House“This magnificent tour de force will hold a prominent place in the literature of compassionate outrage. . . .</p><p> Shepard, awriter of extraordinary historical vision, psychological acuity, and searing irony, presents a profoundly moving portraitof Korczak; explores, with awe, our instinct to adapt and survive; and through the evolving consciousness of hisphenomenally commanding young narrator, exposes the catastrophic impact of war and genocide…MoreWhat You SayFilter byNo Reviews Found .....
