Exile Music

March 1, 2020
Even after escaping the horrors of Nazi-occupied Austria, a creative young girl continues to be tested as she struggles to make a new life in Bolivia. Orly Zingel, born in 1928 to musical Jewish parents living in Vienna, has grown up happy and comfortable. She has a best friend, a make-believe world, and a beloved extended family, but all these will quickly be lost to her in 1938, when the Germans take over Austria and swiftly begin persecuting its Jews. Her father, a viola player in the Vienna Philharmonic, loses his job, and her opera-singer mother will soon find it impossible to make music too; and then the family is forced from their home into a cramped, overcrowded apartment. Steil (The Ambassador's Wife, 2013, etc.) traces this all-too-familiar descent a little too sweetly in the scene-setting opening chapters but then with mounting intensity as Orly's innocence is replaced by loss, shame, and terror. Fortunately, and after much effort, the Zingels secure visas to leave Austria, but their destination, La Paz in Bolivia, presents an immense culture shock which only Orly seems able to embrace. Befriending locals, she begins to learn both Spanish and Indian languages and delights in the country's music and myths. Steil traces the extreme challenges faced by the immigrants, both initially and after the war ends, with commitment but excessive length. As the extent of the Holocaust becomes known, the survivors must deal not only with their own losses, but also the sight of Nazis settling in Bolivia, too. Grief, vengeance, and elements of restoration wind through Orly's coming to terms with the past and her future, an important and touching journey though one that is diffused by its indulgent pacing. An empathetic revisiting of horrific history rendered less conventional for a Holocaust novel by its unusual setting.

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March 16, 2020
In Steil’s tale of a Jewish family’s exodus from pre-WWII-era Vienna (after The Ambassador’s Wife), a young girl is forced to leave her best friend and emigrate to Bolivia. Ten-year-old Orly Zingel’s life is threatened when her musician parents lose their jobs performing operas and symphonies in Vienna after the German occupation, and their months-long wait for visas and passage on an Italian ship overlaps with Hitler’s ominous January 1939 Reichstag speech. Nazi soldiers evict them from their apartment building, and Orly is separated from her best friend, Anneliese, whose family lives there. Though refugee organizations help the Zingels get acclimated once they arrive in in La Paz, Bolivia, they endure altitude sickness and a longing for the refinement and familiarity of Vienna. Orly’s youth enables her to embrace Bolivian culture, while her father gives music lessons and plays the viola with ensembles of fellow refugees. As Orly befriends Miguel, she thinks of Anneliese and wonders if the friendship they shared was the prelude for a deeper relationship between them. Steil expertly weaves historical details into this immersive narrative, complete with a focus on the impact of music in the characters’ lives. Steil’s evocative look at a lesser-explored corner of WWII is well worth picking up. Agent: Brettne Bloom, the Book Group.

Starred review from April 1, 2020
An oft-untold piece of WWII history is the focus of this novel about a Jewish refugee family in Bolivia. In 1930s Vienna, a young girl named Orly flees her home with her parents in the wake of the annexation of Austria by Germany and the tightening restrictions on the Jewish population under Nazi rule. The only country to which they are able to obtain visas is Bolivia, and Orly and her parents find themselves without money, friends, or any knowledge of Spanish in La Paz, which seems harsh and unsophisticated after the urbane world of Vienna. Orly adapts quickly to a new continent even as her parents struggle to leave their old life behind them, and the family waits anxiously for news of Orly's older brother, who remained in Europe, working with the French Resistance. Told over the course of two decades, this is a beautiful coming-of-age tale, following Orly as she questions her sexuality and struggles to come to terms with the horrors she escaped in her homeland. Moving, evocative, and well-researched, this is sure to linger in readers' minds long after the last page has been turned.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)