Review: Love & Treasure
A spellbinding new novel of contraband masterpieces, tragic love, and the unexpected legacies of forgotten crimes, Ayelet Waldman’s Love and Treasure weaves a tale around the fascinating, true history of the Hungarian Gold Train in the Second World War.
In 1945 on the outskirts of Salzburg, victorious American soldiers capture a train filled with unspeakable riches: piles of fine gold watches; mountains of fur coats; crates filled with wedding rings, silver picture frames, family heirlooms, and Shabbat candlesticks passed down through generations. Jack Wiseman, a tough, smart New York Jew, is the lieutenant charged with guarding this treasure—a responsibility that grows more complicated when he meets Ilona, a fierce, beautiful Hungarian who has lost everything in the ravages of the Holocaust. Seventy years later, amid the shadowy world of art dealers who profit off the sins of previous generations, Jack gives a necklace to his granddaughter, Natalie Stein, and charges her with searching for an unknown woman—a woman whose portrait and fate come to haunt Natalie, a woman whose secret may help Natalie to understand the guilt her grandfather will take to his grave and to find a way out of the mess she has made of her own life.
A story of brilliantly drawn characters—a suave and shady art historian, a delusive and infatuated Freudian, a family of singing circus dwarfs fallen into the clutches of Josef Mengele, and desperate lovers facing choices that will tear them apart—Love and Treasure is Ayelet Waldman’s finest novel to date: a sad, funny, richly detailed work that poses hard questions about the value of precious things in a time when life itself has no value, and about the slenderest of chains that can bind us to the griefs and passions of the past.
Love & Treasure is a beautifully written story that will not leave your mind easily. Ms. Waldman weaves her story through several time periods; pre and post WWII and the present. She is able to interweave all the time periods into one amazing story.
I thought Ms. Waldman really captured the aftermath of WWII with honesty and intensity. Americans were not the knight in shining armor coming to rescue the Jews from imprisonment. Instead she writes of corruption, prejudice and depression. I found it so heartbreaking on how the survivors were trying live their lives after so much tragedy. The Jews didn’t have many friends or supporters. They had to create their own support system. The initials stages of the creation of Israel was incredibly interesting; but also depressing. It was so sad how other Jews thought of and treated the prison camp survivors. It seemed the survivors were expendable in order for the rest to regain their homeland. You wished for unity but its just not there.
The present day is all about forgiveness, redemption and rebirth. There is pain as there was in the past; but to different degrees. WWII veteran Jack Wiseman has put all of his guilt into one piece of jewelry. The pendent represents what he lost during the war and the corruption he witnessed. For him, returning the pendent to its rightful owner will relieve him of his burdens. His story with Ilona was incredibly sad. I wish Ms. Waldman included a bit how Ilona lived her life. Did she survive? Did she live a full life?
I wasn’t that attached to Natalie as I was to Ilona. However, I liked her tenacity to solve a mystery and fulfill her grandfather’s wish. It was nice that she was able to find love as well.
I really enjoyed how Ms. Waldmen ended her story. At first, I thought it was a bit disjointed but by the end it fit perfectly with the overall storyline. Nina and Gizelle made for a very tragic story in of itself. I would love to know more.
Love & Treasure is a wonderful book and should be read by anyone who loves WWII history.
Ayelet Waldman is the author of the newly released Love and Treasure (Knopf, January 2014), Red Hook Road and The New York Times bestseller Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace. Her novel Love and Other Impossible Pursuits was made into a film starring Natalie Portman. Her personal essays and profiles of such public figures as Hillary Clinton have been published in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Vogue, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Her radio commentaries have appeared on “All Things Considered” and “The California Report.”
For more information please visit Ayelet’s website. Her missives also appear on Facebook and Twitter.
Her books are published throughout the world, in countries as disparate as England and Thailand, the Netherlands and China, Russia and Israel, Korea and Italy.
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