*[Blog Tour Review & Interview] Felice's World's by Henry Massie

 

Summary:

 

FIRST SHE ESCAPED THE HOLOCAUST AND THE POVERTY OF THE SHTETL. AFTER THAT, SHE MOVED IN MANY WORLDS. AND IN EVERY ONE SHE MADE HER MARK.

Felice Massie was a student in France, caught up in the horrors of Naziism when she was 20 years old. Cut off by the war from her family living in a small village in Poland, she shifted from one country to another attempting to find a home for herself and a means to rescue her parents, brother and sister. As the Holocaust descended on her shtetl, she arrived penniless in America. Over time she raised a family and amassed one of foremost collections of American modern art. Her boldness and resilience became a beacon of hope and inspiration for others.

Summary & Photo taken from Goodreads.com

Length: 211 pages

Source: Review Copy

Publication Date: February 14th 2012

 

First off I'd like to thank Deborah from Pump Up Your Book for inviting me to join the tour for Felice's Worlds, without her I doubt I would have found this book and after reading it I am even more glad that she invited me.

 

Felice's World was an interesting and dynamic read, one that I'm super glad to have had the pleasure to read and review for the author Henry Massie. I've not had much experience reading memoirs about Holocaust survivors so in that aspect this book was a departure from my usual reads albeit a very welcome one.

 

The book, written by Felice's son author Henry Massie was a wonderful read.I enjoyed learning about Felice's early childhood and the journey as she grew from a child to a strong, knowledgeable woman. I say I enjoyed it because while the fact that she lived during WWII in Poland until she was able to leave for Palestine I think that the experiences she went through should not be forgotten. 

 

I think what I most enjoyed about the book was the way the author penned it. You could tell through his writing how much he loved, respected and adored his mother and I think this book is the perfect gift from a son to a mother. It was written in such loving detail I couldn't help but be moved by Felice's story.

 

I would recommend this book to all readers who enjoy biographies and autobiographies especially those who have a special interest in accounts told by Holocaust survivors. This was such a good read and it opened my eyes to a lot. I highly recommend this book to all of my followers. This is one biography that you should not miss out on reading.

 

*I received a free copy in exchange for my free and honest review. I was not compensated in any way and all thoughts and opinions expressed therein are my own.

Really Liked It!
★ ★ ★★

 

To purchase Felice's Worlds via Amazon CLICK HERE

 

 

 

ABOUT HENRY MASSIE

Henry Massie is a psychiatrist, award-winning author, and pioneering researcher in the field of autism. FELICE’S WORLDS–From the Holocaust to the Halls of Modern Art, is the a memoir and biography of his mother, a brilliant and beautiful woman who participated in many of the most critical periods of the 20th Century.

Website Address: www.booksbnimble.com

Twitter Address: @booksbnimble

Facebook Address: www.Facebook.com/booksbnimble

 

Interview with Henry Massie

 

1) First of all, please tell us a special something about what makes you "tick." When you aren't writing, what are you doing.

When I'm not solving my fictional characters' problems or recreating real people's lives on paper, I'm in my office consulting with patients, trying to help them solve problems in real life. I'm a psychiatrist. And when doing none of the above, I may be walking with my dog on Goat Rock beach in northern California.

2) You chose a specific genre, a place and time to write about, what made you choose it?

The genre chose me. Felice's Worlds is a biography of my mother, in a sense her memoir. It is often in the very words she used to tell me about her life and adventures during some of the critical periods of the 20th century. It is also a double-memoir about how her brilliance, boldness and emotional burdens affected me. Her story was dying to be told.

Currently I am working in the very different genre of a highly fictionalized account of how somebody I knew was influenced by his friendship with Marilyn Monroe when he was in high-school and she was in her thirties, in the two years before her death. It is called Prom Date. I fell into writing it because of my fascination with people's desires and dreams and how they turn out.

3) Please share with your readers where you like to write. Do you have a particular space or desk? What can you see from your desk? Do you have props you use to write from? What about special "charms?"

I have three desks: one in my office where I keep charts and so forth, one in a study in my house in Berkeley where I pay bills, and one at my cabin near Guerneville, California, near where the Russian River flows into the Pacific Ocean. The desk at the cabin is where I do my writing. I need to escape from the city desks to the cabin to be creative. "Living on the river," as people say, is to live in another world that fosters fantasies. From my desk there I see three redwood trees reaching to the sky, climbing so high that I can't even see their tops if I put my face to the window and peer up. My desk is completely cluttered with paper, clippings, and notes to myself. My two desks back in town are neat and orderly. The trees outside my window are my writing totems.

4) In your opinion, what makes a book a great one?

A great book has to suck me into it like a whirlpool. After a spell of reading, the characters and their dilemmas in a great book make me feel so tense that I need to put the book down and get some breathing space. The language and imagery has to be alive and poetic. I don't think books that obsess over little details and tiny shades of meaning and feeling are great (I call them dandelion cottage books) even though many critics adore them.

5) Which author(s) most influenced your love of books from childhood?

Starting in about fourth grade I read every Hardy Boy adventure that came out. They still influence my writing. In sixth grade I switched to a series of books about American history for young people. They taught me about real people and events. My interest in character developed in high school when I started reading Faulkner. My favorite was his novella The Bear.

7) Please share with us the underlying message of your book. What would you like your readers to take away after having read the book?

There are several themes running through Felice's Worlds: 1) War endures through millennia in the land called Palestine and Israel because of the never-ending folly of men with guns, 2) Those who suffered the Holocaust have passed their psychological trauma from one generation to the next and the next, 3) Traumatized though they may be, some people show amazing emotional resilience, 4) Beauty may save the soul, but only so far.

I'm content if readers understand these things better after reading Felice's Worlds.

8) Were you able to keep your original title? What was it, if not?

The title of Felice's Worlds was fluid, a shifting about work in progress as long as the book was a work in progress. It didn't crystallize until the book was finished, with help from the publisher.

9) Is there a song or music in general that might best represent your book as a theme song.

Yes, Eastern European klezmer music captures the book. The publisher, BooksBnimble, created a video trailer for Felice's Worlds, with an excerpt of Felice speaking about her past when she was in her seventies, and with pictures of her village on the Polish-Russian border, and her home and art in America. The trailer's klezmer music has snippets of jazz from the 1930s, gypsy rhythms, and Jewish folk melodies. You can access the trailer by going to YouTube, or via the publisher's website, or via the Amazon listing for the book, I believe.

10) If you could write your book again, what would you change?

Felice's Worlds went through three or four drafts, with input from friends and two editors. For the final draft I told myself this time I want to get it right, leave nothing I'm dissatisfied with on the page, say what I want to say, and say it cleanly once a for all. I'm satisfied with what's there.

Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz by Eva Mozes Kor and Lisa Rojany Buccieri

Click here to see a list of the other books I'm reading for this challenge.

 

Summary:

Eva Mozes Kor was 10 years old when she arrived in Auschwitz. While her parents and two older sisters were taken to the gas chambers, she and her twin, Miriam, were herded into the care of the man known as the Angel of Death, Dr. Josef Mengele. Mengele's twins were granted the privileges of keeping their own clothes and hair, but they were also subjected to sadistic medical experiments and forced to fight daily for their own survival, as most of the twins died as a result of the experiements or from the disease and hunger pervasive in the camp. In a narrative told with emotion and restraint, readers will learn of a child's endurance and survival in the face of truly extraordinary evil. The book also includes an epilogue on Eva's recovery from this experience and her remarkable decision to publicly forgive the Nazis. Through her museum and her lectures, she has dedicated her life to giving testimony on the Holocaust, providing a message of hope for people who have suffered, and working toward goals of forgiveness, peace, and the elimination of hatred and prejudice in the world.
Summary taken from Goodreads.com

I generally don't read things about the Holocaust in fact I think I've only read a dozen books about it in my entire life, it is not because I don't care and it is not because I'm not interested because I do and I am. I just get bogged down reading other things.
So last night I stayed up and read and finished this book in one sitting. This is the Memoir of Eva Mozes Kor that focuses on her life when she was used as a guinea pig for Dr. Josef Mengele along side her identical twin sister Miriam when they were just 10 years old.
The atrocities both her and her sister went through were horrific. They were ripped away from their parents and older sisters because they were twins and Dr. Josef Mengele the "Angel of Death" wanted to use them to experiment on hoping to find away to perfect a way to make the Aryan race by studying twins.
Eva, the dominant twin though being younger than her sister Miriam became the strong one while they suffered in the concentration camps. The two sisters used each other to push each other forward and stay alive. Even when Eva was injected with a needle that resulted in her getting sick her twin  Miriam went a week without eating her meager rations so that her sister Eva, would be able to eat because she was sick the nurses weren't feeding her, giving her water or medicine and were just waiting for the sickness to take her. Imagine being that 10 year old girl who only received a piece of bread two inches  big to eat every day giving it up in hopes that her sister would get better.
And get better she did.
When Eva was finally reunited with her sister she found her to be a shadow of her former self. While Eva was isolated in the hospital Miriam was put in solitary confinement and lost the will to live. Through sheer determination Eva found a way to keep her dear twin alive by stealing from the Nazis until her sister returned from that dark place she retreated to within herself.
Shortly after they were liberated from the concentration camp by the Soviets and after much hardship including losing each other for 24 hours they managed with help of one of the organizations at the time and a woman they knew before the war made it back to their old home, hopeful that their mother, father and two sisters would be at home, that they escaped the horrible concentration camps.
When they returned home, they were met with the dilapidated sight of their old house and a cousin who took them to their aunt who they lived with until they moved to Israel where the twins grew into young women.
Eva became a draftswoman and Miriam a Nurse. Then one day Eva met a man who she would later marry and move to America with. Though she hated the thought of leaving her sister she did and made a life for herself and had two children.
She went on to do great things including starting an organization with Miriam for the survivors of Josef Mengele's Twin experiments. Then in 1993 due to an injection she received after years of kidney problems Miriam passed away.
Despite everything she went through Eva was able to rise above the hate and was able to forgive the Nazi's who tortured her and so many others.
This was a heart wrenching account of the atrocities suffered in World War II from the eyes of a child and I feel privledged to have read this book. Eva and all the people who suffered during that time have my utmost respect.
This book is perfect for all audiences 12 years old and up. It is written in a way that is neither too simple nor too complex. It is my hope that in today's turbulent world that these things don't happen again.

*I recieved a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my free and honest review.

★ ★ ★ ★