Michael Lavigne

Architect Roman Guttman is injured in an Arab suicide bombing in the opening scene. The novel is told from three points of view: Roman, Amir (the now dead Palestinian suicide bomber), and Roman's 13-year old daughter, Anna. Amir is watching current events and describing how he came to become a bomber. Roman is having hallucinations, and goes to visit a comatose victim, before venturing into Palestinian territory. Finally, Anna is adrift since her mother died a refusenik in a Russia prison, and is secretly drawn into a Jewish paramilitary operation. Well written, but meandering. It took me 82 pages to notice the different symbols used by Lavigne to identify which character's views were being followed.… (mere)

Interesting story of a Jewish man (Michael) who travels to Florida to care for his dying father. Upon one visit he's given a box of journals written out by his father. He picks up the first and begins to read a story where his father was not Hershel Rosenheim, a Holocaust survivor, but began life as Heinrich Mueller, an SS officer working as an accountant at Majdanek concentration camp who steals a Jewish victim's identity to avoid being charged with war crimes. Michael wonders if this is really his father's story, and who left him the journals? He begins to try to piece together his family's history.

This was an interesting, well told story with just a few minor problems. For one thing, there were a few areas in the story where the author seems to get intentionally crude. These parts took me out of the story because there didn't seem to be a good reason for their inclusion. For another, the mystery of his family's history is only partially resolved at the end. After all the investigating and angst, there is no big "AHA!" moment. But this book does do something that many others fail at -- offering a different take on the suffering of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. Three and a half stars.… (mere)