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The letter was in the Blue Room - her grandfather's painting studio, where Eva spent the happier days of her childhood. After his death, she is the one responsible for his legacy - a legacy threatened by the letter she finds. It is from the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
They have found the testimony her grandfather gave after surviving the labour camps in Austria. And, since he was one of Britain's greatest twentieth century artists, they want to exhibit it. But Joseph Silk - leaving behind József Zyyad - remade himself long ago.
As Eva begins to uncover the truth, she understands the trauma, and the lies, that have haunted her family. She will unravel what happened to József and his brother, who came to England as refugees. One never spoke of his past - the other couldn't let it go.
Their story - and that of the woman they both loved - is in her hands. Revealing it would change her grandfather's hard-won identity. But it could also change the tide of history. This testament can lend words to wordless grief, and teach her how to live.
Kim Sherwood's extraordinary first novel is a powerful statement of intent. Beautifully written, moving and hopeful, it crosses the tidemark where the third generation meets the first, finding a new language to express love, loss and our place within history.
This is an extremely ambitious debut novel. Its scope is huge and I think the author has accomplished this through writing with skill, intelligence and compassion.
Bearing in mind the difficult subject matter, the language is beautiful and each word has meaning. Nothing is superfluous to the construction of this novel and at times I was so caught up in the lyricism of Ms. Sherwood's writing that I had to slow my reading down and re-read occasional sentences of this novel just to luxuriate in it.
There are many Holocaust novels on the shelves of bookshops but this one has a slightly different perspective to some of the others. It looks closely at self-identity and what can happen to the relationships of those who survived and also, the impact that has had on the future generations of survivors.
Evidently well researched the author has brought a myriad of facts to the novel and turned them into an amazingly accomplished and powerful first novel and I look forward to seeing what she will realize in her future writing.
ISBN: 978 1786488671
Publisher: Riverrun
Kim Sherwood was born in Camden, London in 1989. She studied on the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia, going on to teach creative writing at UEA and the University of Sussex. Kim's stories and articles have appeared in numerous journals, including Mslexia, Lighthouse and Going Down Swinging. The manuscript of her debut novel, Testament, won the Bath Novel Award in 2016.
Kim began writing Testament in 2011 after her grandfather, the actor George Baker, passed away. In the same year, Kim's grandmother began to talk about her experiences as a Holocaust Survivor for the first time. These events provided seeds for a story that grew as Kim undertook research into the events of the Holocaust in Hungary, and as extremism rose again across Europe.
Kim lives in Bath. She is s Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of the West of England. Testament is her first novel.
What a wonderful review Anna! The sentence that put this one on my TBR list is where you write that you reread to luxuriate in the author's words.
ReplyDeleteI hope you will enjoy reading this as much as I did. It's a fantastic debut.
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