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First glimpsed riding on the back of a boy's motorcycle, fourteen-year-old Czeslawa comes to life in this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, who imagines her upbringing in a small Polish village before her world imploded in late 1942.
Stripped of her modest belongings, shorn, and tattooed number 26947 on arriving at Auschwitz, Czeslawa is then photographed. Three months later, she is dead.
How did this happen to an ordinary Polish citizen? This is the question that Tuck grapples with in this haunting novel, which frames Czeslawa's story within the epic tragedy of six million Poles who perished during the German occupation. A decade prior to writing The Rest Is Memory, Tuck read an obituary of the photographer Wilhelm Brasse, who took more than 40,000 pictures of the Auschwitz prisoners. Included were three of Czeslawa Kwoka, a Catholic girl from rural southeastern Poland. Tuck cut out the photos and kept them, determined to learn more about Czeslawa, but she was only able to glean the barest facts: the village she came from, the transport she was on, that she was accompanied by her mother and her neighbors, her tattoo number, and the date of her death. From this scant evidence, Tuck's novel becomes a remarkable kaleidoscopic feat of imagination, something only our greatest novelists can do.
"Beautifully written, all the while instilling a sense of horror" (Susanna Moore), Tuck's language swirls about, yet not a word is out of place. The subtly rotating images tumble out at us, accelerating as we learn about Czeslawa's tragic stay in Auschwitz, the lives of real people such as the barbaric Commandant Rudolf Höss; his unconscionable wife, Hedwig; the psychiatrist and child rescuer Janusz Korczak; and the mordant Polish short story writer Tadeusz Borowski.
Although we are certain of Czeslawa's fate, we have no choice but to keep turning the pages, thoroughly mesmerized by Tuck's near otherworldly prose.
In Lily Tuck's hands, The Rest Is Memory becomes an unforgettable work of historical reclamation that rescues an innocent life, one previously only recalled by a stark triptych of photographs.
"The Rest Is Memory is a literary resurrection, as shattering as it is astonishing. Lily Tuck has done the impossible; from darkness and hideous cruelty, she has woven an unforgettable paean to hope, to life, to justice."—Junot Diaz
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
December 10, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9798894866048
- File size: 85117 KB
- Duration: 02:57:19
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from September 16, 2024
Tuck (Sisters) draws on the true story of a Polish Catholic girl who died in Auschwitz in her unflinching latest. The reader first meets Czeslawa Kwoka shortly before the German invasion in 1939. She lives on a rustic farm with her hardworking, “tired and too thin” mother, Katarzyna, and father, Pawel, where she tends to the family’s livestock and is smitten with an older local boy named Anton. In 1941, the Nazis implement Hitler’s Germanization plan and seize land from local farmers. When her father and uncle protest, they’re killed by Nazi soldiers. The following year, Czeslawa, now 14, is sent with Katarzyna to Auschwitz, where they are interned alongside camp photographer Wilhelm Brasse, whose images of Czeslawa and other children in the camp inspired Tuck to write the novel. Tuck also chronicles Anton’s escape from the Nazis and subsequent capture by the Russians, who imprison him in Siberia. With graphic imagery and lyrical prose, Tuck vividly evokes Czeslawa’s innocence and resilience, as she tries to hold out hope by imagining Anton in Auschwitz with her. It’s an unforgettable portrait of buoyant youth in the grimmest of places. (Dec.)Correction: A previous version of this review mischaracterized the reason why the protagonist’s father and uncle were killed. The review has also been updated for clarity.
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