Enemies, A Love Story

Rating:
Summary: Eloquent, Hilarious . . . and Heartbreaking
Review: Imagine being a Jew in Brooklyn, NY in 1949. Just about everyone you know has been through the Nazi camps. Just about everyone you know has lost husbands, wives, children, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and sometimes all of the above. Just about everyone you know has survived years of awful, humiliating, degrading and terrifying experiences. How would you cope? How would you maintain your faith in God? How would you begin--not to mention maintain--a relationship based on love, one with hope for the future and the dream of children?

This is the story of Herman Broder, a fortyish Polish expatriate. He was not a survivor of the camps. Instead, he escaped them by spending three years in a barn owned by the mother of his illiterate peasant servant, Yadwiga, who hid and fed him. In helpless gratitude, and for no other reason, he married her after the war so that she could come to the U. S.

Herman also has a mistress, Masha. Masha is married but is separated from her husband. Masha spent years in the camps. She is very beautiful. She smokes incessantly, speaks rapidly, is a bundle of nervous energy and she can't sleep. "If I do . . . then I'm back with them immediately. They're dragging me, beating me, chasing me. They come running from all sides, like hounds after a hare." She lives in a cramped apartment with her mother whom she loves but whose strictly orthodox ways are a reminder to her every day of her wayward current life . . . and possibly also the life she led in the camps from which she escaped.

Herman ekes out a living by ghost-writing for a showy rabbi, but tells Yadwiga that he sells books out of town so he can stay with Masha for days at a time. He doesn't want anyone else to know that he works for the rabbi and doesn't want the rabbi to know where he lives. His life is a complex weave of lies and cover-ups, stories and duplicity, and into the middle of it comes his wife from Poland, Tamara, whom he had thought to be dead these many years. She has also survived the camps. "We sawed logs in the forest--twelve and fourteen hours a day. At night it as so cold I couldn't sleep at all. It stank so, I couldn't breathe. Many of the people suffered from beriberi. One minute a person would be talking to you, making plans, and suddenly he would be silent. You spoke to him and he didn't answer. You moved closer and saw that he was dead."

It turns out that Herman wasn't such a great husband before the war. It turns out that he abandoned his wife and his two children for another woman. It turns out that his children did not survive the camps. Imagine this.

Herman is a mass of indecisiveness. He can not say no to anybody. He can not believe in God but finds he can not abandon him. He can not practice his religion but can not leave those who do. He can not plan for the future because he can not believe there will be one. He can not leave Yadwiga but he can not love her. He can not meet Masha's expectations but is helplessly in love with her. He feels he must do right by Tamara but finds that he is physically, mentally, legally and emotionally incapable of doing so.

He is a clown; a sad clown; a forlorn, likable, exasperating clown, stumbling from one comical misadventure to the next, complicating his life further with every effort he makes to simplify it. He lives in a world in which no one can bear to confront the truth; a world in which the truth is simply a philosophical conceit which is as likely as anything else to cause pain.

His story is told in a very straightforward style by his creator, Mr. Singer, who is a careful and deliberate observer, but who never passes judgment, expresses opinion, or provides explanation. His characters are sharply defined. Their conversations are loaded with meaning, and sometimes that which is not said speaks more loudly than that which is. It is a humorous tale that is also sad and poignant and true. It is a remarkable piece of work, a brilliant piece of work, and it stands as a testament to the survivors and victims of the Holocaust.

Rating:
Summary: Eloquent, Hilarious . . . and Heartbreaking
Review: Imagine being a Jew in Brooklyn, NY in 1949. Just about everyone you know has been through the Nazi camps. Just about everyone you know has lost husbands, wives, children, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and sometimes all of the above. Just about everyone you know has survived years of awful, humiliating, degrading and terrifying experiences. How would you cope? How would you maintain your faith in God? How would you begin--not to mention maintain--a relationship based on love, one with hope for the future and the dream of children?

This is the story of Herman Broder, a fortyish Polish expatriate. He was not a survivor of the camps. Instead, he escaped them by spending three years in a barn owned by the mother of his illiterate peasant servant, Yadwiga, who hid and fed him. In helpless gratitude, and for no other reason, he married her after the war so that she could come to the U. S.

Herman also has a mistress, Masha. Masha is married but is separated from her husband. Masha spent years in the camps. She is very beautiful. She smokes incessantly, speaks rapidly, is a bundle of nervous energy and she can't sleep. "If I do . . . then I'm back with them immediately. They're dragging me, beating me, chasing me. They come running from all sides, like hounds after a hare." She lives in a cramped apartment with her mother whom she loves but whose strictly orthodox ways are a reminder to her every day of her wayward current life . . . and possibly also the life she led in the camps from which she escaped.

Herman ekes out a living by ghost-writing for a showy rabbi, but tells Yadwiga that he sells books out of town so he can stay with Masha for days at a time. He doesn't want anyone else to know that he works for the rabbi and doesn't want the rabbi to know where he lives. His life is a complex weave of lies and cover-ups, stories and duplicity, and into the middle of it comes his wife from Poland, Tamara, whom he had thought to be dead these many years. She has also survived the camps. "We sawed logs in the forest--twelve and fourteen hours a day. At night it as so cold I couldn't sleep at all. It stank so, I couldn't breathe. Many of the people suffered from beriberi. One minute a person would be talking to you, making plans, and suddenly he would be silent. You spoke to him and he didn't answer. You moved closer and saw that he was dead."

It turns out that Herman wasn't such a great husband before the war. It turns out that he abandoned his wife and his two children for another woman. It turns out that his children did not survive the camps. Imagine this.

Herman is a mass of indecisiveness. He can not say no to anybody. He can not believe in God but finds he can not abandon him. He can not practice his religion but can not leave those who do. He can not plan for the future because he can not believe there will be one. He can not leave Yadwiga but he can not love her. He can not meet Masha's expectations but is helplessly in love with her. He feels he must do right by Tamara but finds that he is physically, mentally, legally and emotionally incapable of doing so.

He is a clown; a sad clown; a forlorn, likable, exasperating clown, stumbling from one comical misadventure to the next, complicating his life further with every effort he makes to simplify it. He lives in a world in which no one can bear to confront the truth; a world in which the truth is simply a philosophical conceit which is as likely as anything else to cause pain.

His story is told in a very straightforward style by his creator, Mr. Singer, who is a careful and deliberate observer, but who never passes judgment, expresses opinion, or provides explanation. His characters are sharply defined. Their conversations are loaded with meaning, and sometimes that which is not said speaks more loudly than that which is. It is a humorous tale that is also sad and poignant and true. It is a remarkable piece of work, a brilliant piece of work, and it stands as a testament to the survivors and victims of the Holocaust.

Rating:
Summary: Living with the unthinkable
Review: Isaac Bashevis Singer was an idea novelist, in the way that Turgenev was. He fashioned his plots and characters around the questions he wanted to explore, and never let them get out of his control. But, like Turgenev, Singer was a great writer and never let his characters and plots become secondary. His writing is always entertaining as well as enlightening. Enemies, A Love Story is a case in point.

Herman Broder is a Jewish man living in New York City in the late 1940's, having survived the Holocaust in Poland hiding from the Nazis. Now the war is over, but Herman is no more at liberty than he was then. Believing his first wife died in a concentration camp, Herman has married again; he also has a mistress; to both women he lies about his work, and to his boss he lies about his women. Then his first wife shows up alive, and now he has to lie to her too. Herman is always on the verge of running, he must relentlessly cover his tracks in case he has to escape again. This sounds like a comedy of errors, and Singer finds the humor in Herman's plight, but he never loses sight of the tragedy which produced Herman's obsession with escape. This is a man so damaged that he can't really live anymore, and that's the question Singer is exploring with Enemies: is it possible to be whole again after going through the Holocaust? And if not, is it possible to live with the pieces that are left? Consider Vladek Spiegelman in Art Spiegelman's Maus, also a Holocaust survivor who only made it through sheer luck and a relentless hoarding and parceling out of otherwise mundane and unimportant items; now, though he's wealthy and free to do as he pleases, he can't stop hoarding, just in case.

Singer is asking, are the Jews who lived through Hitler's final solution dead, in their own way, like the victims who went into the ovens? What is there to do when you've lived through the unthinkable, and when so many people didn't? Enemies, A Love Story is a brilliant novel that grabs you by the mind as well as the heart.

Rating:
Summary: A must read, great story - no sugar-coating!
Review: It's always hard to talk about Holocaust; it's unbearable to look at pictures of people tortured there. This book is such a masterpiece it does not go into engrossed misery, it's about a guy ending up with 3 wifes as a result of a terrible war... It's funny and ironic - no conclusions - it's all up to the reader to think about it...

Rating:
Summary: Singer's best novel
Review: Singer establishes a tragic situation, then has the nerve to make a comedy. Nobody else could achieve this delicate balance. If you're interested in exploring Singer, start here. Then read his posthumously published novels: The Certificate, then Shadows on the Hudson. If you don't like them, I'll give you your money back.

Rating:
Summary: Funny and sad -- a story you will never forget
Review: Singer's ear for the way people really spoke was impeccable, and his gifts in this area are on display beautifully in "Enemies." The dialogue in this book is unmatched in fiction.

By the way, it's funny, sad and ironic that Amazon visitors have written exactly two reviews of "Enemies," while several hundred have been written about "The Bridges of Madison County." I believe that Singer himself would just smile at this fact.

Final thought: Read this book. It's one of the ten best novels of all time.

Rating:
Summary: Nobel Prize Winners are few and far between
Review: There are reasons that Isaac Bashevis Singer won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and all of these reasons are apparent in ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY.

Though he is not the only Jewish author to have won the Nobel, he is the only author whose primary writing was in Yiddish. Hence, the version of ENEMIES that I read was a translation.

Still, the simplicity of his prose shines through the novel. His storytelling skills are spellbinding.

Mr. Singer perfectly captures the undertone of desperation and doom connected with those who endured the Nazis and survived.

This novel will shock and it will sadden but it never will be less than writing at its finest.

Rating:
Summary: Anguishing Post-Holocaust Novel
Review: This novel is the story of a Holocaust survivor and his attempt to juggle three women in mid-20th century New York City. Although there are some amusing moments, this is not a book to be taken lightly. The devastation these people have suffered because of the Nazis has all but left empty shells. Singer's style in this novel is quick-paced and straightforward with remarkable dialogue.