The Postcard (Hardcover)
Staff Reviews
A French mother and daughter research the story of their ancestors who were exterminated during WWII. The catalyst is a single postcard that arrives at the family residence during the 1990s with four names. Who were these people? Berest deftly mixes history with this fictional family. What heartache? Who survives and who doesn't? We know as the reader that many families were split up and killed. But what about the people left to pick up the pieces as the horrors go from generation to generation?
— ValerieMay 2023 Indie Next List
“This family saga, about a mysterious postcard received decades after WWII, plunges a daughter and her mother into the search for the truth and their roots. I have never read a book so well-written, so engaging, so poignant, so real.”
— Marianne Reiner, La Playa Books, San Diego, CA
Description
Winner of the Choix Goncourt Prize, Anne Berest's The Postcard is a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, an enthralling investigation into family secrets, and poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling.
January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Op ra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest's maternal great-grandparents, Ephra m and Emma, and their children, No mie and Jacques--all killed at Auschwitz.
Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why. Aided by her chain-smoking mother, family members, friends, associates, a private detective, a graphologist, and many others, she embarks on a journey to discover the fate of the Rabinovitch family: their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris. What emerges is a moving saga that shatters long-held certainties about Anne's family, her country, and herself.