A Mad Desire to Dance

Starred review from November 24, 2008
Nobel laureate Wiesel (Night
) grapples with questions of madness, sadness and memory in this difficult but powerful novel. Doriel Waldman, a Polish Jew born in 1936, survived the occupation in hiding with his father while his mother made a reputation for herself in the Polish resistance. But he did not escape tragedy: his two siblings were murdered and his parents died in an accident shortly after the war. At the novel's opening, he is 60 years old, miserable, alone and on the verge of insanity. Most of the novel unfolds in the office of Doriel's shrink, Dr. Thérèse Goldschmidt, where he reveals himself to be an uncooperative patient, and his aggressive, obsessive rants on the origins of his troubles make for difficult reading. But Wiesel handles the situation expertly, and as Thérèse draws Doriel out, a multilayered narrative emerges: the journey through sadness and toward redemption; a meditation on the hand dealt to Holocaust survivors; and a valuable parable on the wages of human trauma. While the novel is not always easy sledding, there are ample rewards—intellectual and visceral—for the willing reader.

Starred review from January 1, 2009
Interactions between a patient and his therapist elucidate the human condition in the latest from Nobel Prize winner Wiesel (The Time of the Uprooted, 2005, etc.).

"Is a madman who knows he 's mad really mad? " the narrator imagines the reader asking on the first page of the novel. "Or: In a mad world, isn 't the madman who is aware of his madness the only sane person? " The novel 's self-absorbed protagonist, Doriel Waldman, might not be mad at all, though he could well be delusional, is obviously troubled and is very much alone. He 's also uncommonly bright and perceptive, a challenge for his female therapist, whose notes on her sessions with Doriel comprise much of the novel that isn 't his narration. During the course of their therapy sessions, she learns of his life with his parents in Brooklyn —his mother, who could pass as Aryan and served in the undercover Resistance, and his father, whose features were more recognizably Jewish. Both of them died in an automobile accident after the war, and both of his siblings are dead as well. The orphaned Doriel came to live in Brooklyn with relatives, failing to fill the hole left by the deaths in his family with a series of encounters with girls and women, who may or may not be imaginary. His doctor knows he is independently wealthy, but not why, and she suspects that he may be a virgin, though he is somewhere around 60 years old. With most of the novel transpiring in Doriel 's memory and in his sessions, he seems less like a madman than an existential Everyman, one for whom "being born is more like exile than liberation. " He finds himself in a state of perpetual fear, "a fear that is not yet death but that is no longer life. " Yet the novel ultimately ends on an affirmative note, a triumph of life 's dance of desire over the madness that is a living death.

Philosophy meets psychology in this profound, often poetic novel.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 15, 2009
Doriel Waldman, a reclusive and scholarly European Jew living in New York City, has tried to block out the nightmarish events of the 20th century by retreating into the world of medieval Jewish history. He is a student of Jewish traditions and the Jewish community, but he is incapable of forming relationships. Now, at age 60, he is so lonely and depressed that he fears his soul has been stolen by a dybbuk. In desperation, he decides to try traditional psychoanalysis but proves to be an extremely difficult patient, arguing with his female therapist every step of the way, just as he has argued with God. He is especially reluctant to discuss his parents, who died in a car crash just after World War II. The therapy novel is a distinct genre, and Wiesel takes full advantage of the format by gradually revealing the important traumas in Doriel's life and illuminating them with extracts from the therapist's notebooks. Originally published in France, this dense and difficult novel expands on some of the provocative themes in Nobel Prize winner Wiesel's celebrated memoir, "Night". For larger fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 10/1/08.]Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2008
Wiesel continues to write Holocaust fiction and nonfiction, but nothing has the enduring power of his stark memoir Night (1960) about his experience in the camps, where he watched his father break down and die. In this novel, translated from the French, it is once again a survivors memories of what happened to a boy and his family that will rivet readers. At 60, Doriel Waldman, a religious scholarsingle, insomniac, alonespeaks to a psychoanalyst in New York, remembering his childhood hiding in a Polish village, trying to deal with his guilt. At times, the drama almost drowns in commentary and contemplation (Am I mad? What is madness? Who will tell me who I am?). We even get excerpts from the psychologists notes as the patient ruminates about his melancholy and why he is unable to commit to a relationship. Beyond the therapy and philosophy, the terse personal vignettes are gripping: from how Doriels sister sacrificed herself for him, to his return home after the war to find villagers occupying his house. The secrets surprise you to the end.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)