The Houseguest

February 1, 2016
It's 1941, and the Jews of Europe are disappearing to the East or fleeing on ships that can find no safe harbor. This sophisticated first novel considers the response by Americans Jews to the ever more insistent evidence of racial conflagration across the Atlantic. An inevitable cloud of despair hangs over this timely, psychologically questing debut, since the reader, like many of the book's characters, already knows things will not end well. Brooks uses a handful of figures to express various responses of American Jews to the terrible news filtering out of Europe and the national reluctance to intervene. In Manhattan, firebrand Shmuel Spiro wants to raise a Jewish army to fight the Nazis; in upstate Utica, otherworldly rabbi Max Hoffman understands the hypocrisy behind America's refugee visa quotas and how high the bureaucratic bar is set; and Utica junkyard owner Abe Auer, a first-generation immigrant himself, remains haunted by his role in his Russian family's history. While opposing factions argue and disagree at conferences about how to rescue Hitler's victims, many middle-class Jews like Abe's wife and daughter find their comfortable lifestyles largely undisrupted. Then a refugee arrives, an atypical one--glamorous, unsettling Yiddish actress Ana Beidler. Mature in tone and unhurried in pace, Brooks' novel is at its best in its portraits of unhappy men confronted by cataclysmic events in the world and unexpressed longings at home. Its dramatic fulcrum, however, is the book's weakness. Ana, blessed with irresistible allure and a burned-out attitude, is a more familiar character--the disruptive seductress--than the troubled men in Utica and New York. Her actions may be central to the novel's development, yet it's a more compelling and original book in the scenes without her. Brooks offers an imperfect but insightful depiction of the choices individuals make in unbearable times.

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Starred review from March 15, 2016
Brooks' debut novel is like taking a high-speed rail journey: scenery and images slip by, impressions of a landscape not seen fully until the end. A complex plot with parallel story lines follows three Jewish American families during WWII as each person tries to make sense of the Holocaust in Europe, and to help. The European refugee staying with the Auer family in Utica is the houseguest in the story, and she's an unexpectedly challenging person to hostan eccentric, sensual actress who sleeps late, smokes in her messy room, and wanders unclothed at night. Max, the rabbi, gets involved in Shmuel's vision of a Jewish army but is caught by a sense of futility and his own pain, while Shmuel's fundraising efforts reap community scorn. And, yet, this is not a depressing book. Every image, metaphor, and character is carefully crafted to build a portrait of a vibrant culture and to illustrate that the ultimate inhumanity is ignoring people; the highest good is caring. With the emotional depth and lyricism of Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated (2002), and the flawed personalities and lavish imagery of Dara Horn's The World to Come (2006), this witty, moving, and literary paean to a people bursts with the depth and magic of a Chagall painting.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)