Nightfather, Paperback/Carl Friedman

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Contributor(s):Author: Carl Friedman Nightfather is a novel about the Holocaust like no other. Written in a deeply affecting style mixing lightness with gravity, it captures not only the experience of the concentration camp, but also its powerful legacy, passed down to a new generation through the enormous bond of love that ties parent and child. In forty brief chapters, the young daughter of a survivor tells of the efforts she and her two brothers make to try to bridge the gulf between themselves and their father that has been formed by his camp experiences. Unlike many of his generation, who remain silent, their father feels compelled to repeat the details of his ordeal. The children inhabit two worlds at once: the world of school and their friends, and their father's nightmare world of hunger, gas, and the crematoria. Every ordinary incident - a trip to the zoo, a drive in the country, an invitation to join Brownies - evokes a memory and a story of the camp. What are children to make of stories of humiliation and murder? Where do the stories stop and reality begin? Striving to find a balance, the children consider their father's world in terms of their own. They have had chicken pox and measles; he has camp. Toothpaste is not only for brushing teeth, but also for emergency use to prevent thirst. As their father prowls restlessly through the house at night, telling them more and more about the camp, the children's essential innocence remains strangely intact, making its horrors at once easier to face and all the more harrowing. Gradually, with accumulating force, the story of one man's imprisonment and the terms of his survival are revealed.  Review citations New York Times - pg. 40 - 09/17/1995