Shanghai Legacy

By Marion Cuba

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591138094
• ISBN13: 9781591138099
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Booklocker.com
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 0.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A little-known chapter in Jewish history intertwined in a worthy novel

Author Cuba takes a little-known chapter in Jewish history and writes a very worthy novel. The device is a diary; Maya finds the diary of her mysterious mother Hannah after Hannah dies. Now some of the mystery of Hannah's life unfolds for Maya, and she learns of her mother's struggles, bravery and difficulties while she examines her own life through new eyes. Hannah escaped Germany and went to Shanghai and ultimately ended up in America. The story of her flight and her struggles is the backdrop for the novel, and as the mystery of Hannah unfolds, Maya learns a lot about her own life and her own attitudes. The diary is the most fascinating part of the book--the refugees in China mourn the loss of their comfortable life in German and they live in squalor in Japanese-occupied China. Shanghai is dirty and cold. Diseases are rampant, yet the Jewish refugees hear stories of Treblinka and realize that though life is hard, it is far more horrible in Germany. And the survivor guilt sets in, for the victims of the Holocaust, for those left behind when Hannah goes to America. This is a very good novel; the interleaving of Maya's life is typical of novels today that twine two lives together and show their relationship and contrasts. But for me, the diary was so poignant and real, it almost overshadowed Maya's story. However, alone it is almost too much to read and together with Maya's tale, you can almost walk her part and with her, begin to untangle the lives that affected you from the past, lives with struggles that we can hardly know. A terrific book. Recommended.

I WISH I COULD READ IT AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME

Cuba does a sensitive job depicting the complicated life of Hannah, a German Jewish teenager in World War II era Shanghai. This gripping page turner is as exciting in its flash-forward story of her adult daughter years later in Manhattan as it is of the highly perilous years of Hannah's youth in China. I only regret that I cannot read it again for the first time.

There is a Good Story Here

"Your mother," she repeats, dipping her nurse's cap toward Hannah's room again, "she is like a melon that will never ripen, Miss Silver," is what the nurse tells the dying woman's daughter, Maya. That unripened melon, Maya soon discovers is her mother's diary dating back to 1938, when approximately twenty thousand European Jews escaped Nazi Germany to Shanghai and created a unique ghetto. Why Shanghai? It was the only city in the world that accepted foreigners without any entry requirements. Marion Cuba's debut novel, Shanghai Legacy, draws her central character, Maya, into the private thoughts and secrets of her mother Hanna, whom she never fully knew, and whose childhood had been lost amidst the life-changing hardships she had endured while a refugee in Shanghai. Maya is hungry to explore an era that was never spoken about in their household and of which she was ignorant. Moreover, Maya realizes, objects such as diaries, hold meaning, as they reveal an individual's aspirations and dreams, as well as their eventual relationships with family members. All of this becomes vividly possible by the discovery of Hannah's German diary recounting her teen-age experiences in Shanghai. The diary is translated to Maya by an antique dealer Sam Ascher, whom she hires to appraise her later mother's furniture. Sam is a former attorney, who has taken over his father's business, and as Maya subsequently learns, is a child of Holocaust survivors. Interwoven into the narrative is Maya's discovery of herself and her cold and difficult relationship with her husband, Harold, who is a prominent ophthalmologist, and very much wrapped up in himself and his profession. Maya challenges Harold's repressive hold over her when she decides to keep her mother's home that she has inherited. This leads to her frequent stays in the house, while it is being renovated. However, it also causes some guilt feelings, as she questions herself playing house alone and not even thinking of Harold, as well as her life in Chappaqua. There is a good story here; unfortunately, it is jumbled up in the roots of a much longer tale that needs to be told. How much richer would it have been if there was more detailed exploration of just how much Hanna's life affected that of her daughter's. Nonetheless, the author shows a great deal of promise and the novel certainly deserves a read. Norm Goldman, Editor Bookpleasures