- Paperback: 80 pages
- Publisher: Phoenix (21 Jun 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0752880764
- ISBN-13: 978-0752880761
- Product Dimensions: 18.8 x 12.4 x 1.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 517,177 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
"Ozick is one hell of a writer and The Shawl rings like a bell marked Truth." (COLIN WATERS SUNDAY HERLAD )
Product Description
The Shawl is considered a modern classic - a masterpiece in two acts. The horror and desolation evoked through piercing imagery - first through the abomination of a Holocaust concentration camp murder, second through the eyes of the murdered child's mother, thirty years later, now 'a madwoman and a scavenger' - offers the reader a chilling insight into the empty suffering of a 'survivor'. In 'The Shawl', a woman named Rosa Lublin watches a concentration camp guard murder her child, a child barely old enough to walk. The shawl that was the child's security blanket and lone possession reappears in the second story, 'Rosa'. Rosa appears thirty years later, living in a Miami hotel and feeling the strain of a lifetime of pain: the hollowness of seeing her baby killed, of managing her harrowing memories she's being told to forget, and of even now being treated as a specimen and not a human being.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Though this book, written in two parts - 'The Shawl' and 'Rosa' - is only seventy pages long, it packs a powerful and weighty punch. Rich and densely written, her words spill off the page and score themselves onto your mind... Ozick really is one of the best authors I've read in a long time. I can't recommend this book enough.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
24 reviews
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful
A haunting piece of Holocaust-inspired fiction
20 Jan 2002
Format:Paperback
"The Shawl," the book by Cynthia Ozick, is made up of two linked pieces: a short story (also entitled "The Shawl"), and a novella ("Rosa"). Together, these pieces make up a book that is just about 70 pages long. But despite its brevity, "The Shawl" is a powerful work of fiction.
The book tells the story of Rosa Lublin, a Polish Jew and survivor of the Nazi Holocaust. Eventually she settles in Florida. This is a dark, haunting tale with some surreal satiric elements.
There are many fascinating touches to "The Shawl." I was intrigued by Ozick's representation of immigrant "English-as-a-second-language" speech patterns. Also noteworthy is Ozick's look at the complexity of linguistic, class, and national identification within the Jewish community. Rosa's problematic relationship-by-mail with a professor of clinical social pathology is also noteworthy, and struck me as comparable to a certain motif in Toni Morrison's novel "Beloved."
Rosa, who is bitter, angry, and psychologically broken, is a genuinely haunting and tragic figure. "The Shawl" is not light reading, but it is a memorable and rewarding book. Recommended as a companion text: Art Spiegelman's 2-volume "Maus."
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful
An amazing piece of fiction
29 July 2000
Format:Paperback
The Shawl is a hauntingly beautiful story and novella of a woman, Rosa, who watches her baby daughter, Magda, die at the hands of a concentration camp guard during the holocaust. Told in lyrical prose, Ms. Ozick captivates us with the symbol of the shawl representing everything that Rosa lost during the war. The shawl is what she hid her daughter Magda in at the concentration camp so that Magda wouldn't be thrown into the gas chambers. But, her evil niece Stella (who is with Rosa and Magda at the concentration camp) steals the shawl from the baby one night. The baby is then found and killed by a guard.
The rest of the story tells of Rosa's life 39 years later as she has taken residence in a dumpy hotel room in Florida that evil Stella (who now resides in New York) pays for. Here, Rosa lives day to day in a sort of mental fit, deluding herself that Magda is still a live, a beautiful lioness, a doctor married to a doctor, living in a gorgeous house in New York. Amid open sardine cans and half eaten eggs, Rosa writes letters to this daughter.
Toward the end of the novella, Rosa finally receives a box with the shawl in it which Stella has reluctantly sent to her. "Get on with your life; join a club; put on your bathing suit!" Stella tells her in a letter attached to the shawl. But, all that Rosa cares about is breathing in the shawl, Magda.
Overall, this was certainly one of the greatest pieces of writing I've ever had the chance to read. Cynthia Ozick knows her subject, is deeply deeply in tune with her characters and touches us with all that they feel and do.
I look forward to reading more of her work. She is a truly gifted writer who has much to offer the world.
16 of 19 people found the following review helpful
The best fictional evocation of the Holoaust
4 Oct 1997
Format:Paperback
Both stories in this brief book ("The Shawl" and "Rosa") are about the same women, who sees her baby killed in the camps and thirty years later is haunted by her memory. "The Shawl" (the first story) is, I think, the best short story in the English language (it dwarfs Carver and Cheever in scope, has deeper moral thrust than O'Conner and in a few pages evokes the Holocaust as much as Primo Levi was able to do in his eloquent long works). In a few words: Read this story and you will be changed. On the other hand, "Rosa" (a novella) is drawn out and, though powerful, more nuanced and subtle than its predecessor. Although usually good things, these elements work against the story (especially if read in succession) - "The Shawl"'s power is its unwillingness to compromise anything whereas "Rosa" seems to err a bit on the long side. It's almost tempting to give the stories entirely different ratings but the "10" of "The Shawl" so far eclipses any "9" or "8" I would give "Rosa" that I think it unfair to lower the status of the better story. This work is not nice or easy and doesn't attempt any of the catharsis some Holocaust Fiction ludicrously includes. It is hard to read (and should be) because both works are more or less a statement about our own humanity (or inhumanity). The prose itself is wonderfully easy, but the depth of emotion Ozick strikes makes this a very difficult 69 pages. Read it and you too will "never forget".
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