"The Shawl" is an unneeded new entry into the recreation of the Holocaust. Nothing new was said and the short length doesn't allow for any meaningful introspection. Its power instead comes from the image it conceives, one based on real events apparently, around which the rest of the tale is built. So why do I say it's unnecessary? Because it's shocking and poetic, and we've been here before, a thousand times already. This is closer to poetry, and I've read better poetry.

It didn't move me. It saddened me, horrified me even. I cannot even process something of this level of brutality happening in real life. But it doesn't leave a mark. Not necessarily distasteful, but not exactly of good taste either.

As for Rosa... well. There's not much to say. I get where it's going for, but it's clear that what made Ozick a sensation was The Shawl, and not Rosa. Rosa is an overwritten study of character that dives too deeply into someone projecting too little, which is something I didn't believe I could say about a victim of the Holocaust. I'm not a fan of the structure and the concept of recapturing one's life only through the power of "love". We've also been here before, and I'm sadly not impressed. There's not much too like, sadly.

Now, one star is harsh given the intention behind the work, but it utterly fails in my eyes in too many ways, and doesn't have the benefit of being of my taste either. Not the worst pack of short stories, just sadly not my jam at all.

Watch the Son of Saul instead...

The ordeal of a Jewish woman at the hands of the Nazi regime during WWII.
The aftermath, forty years later. Will she succumb to madness or give a chance to revival?
Exquisite writing. Literature at its best.

3.5/5 stars

fuck man that was depressing. well-written enough, but not as memorable as i was hoping, especially compared to other pieces of similar vein i've engaged with.

Sad tale, confusing too.
Unreliable narrators doesn't even come close.

ozick sidesteps the adornoian missive (by now a truism in and of itself, trotted out in any discussion of “holocaust lit” that wants to throw down on the maudlin middlebrow) by creating an adornoian character of sorts - one so attuned to essential horror that she bristles at vulgarities with her entire being. the shawl serves as a sort of sad talisman, but its symbolic status is soggy as the silk itself. rosa’s vivid conjurations of her teenage daughter take the form of letters never sent. but they start to fill an awful void, fictions in direct opposition to the commodification of her reality, desperate to return a shred of god, of beauty, to a cosmic injustice. ozick neatly (seventy short pages) teases truths from the tangled lattices of opportunism and victimhood, and she comes to rest on a resigned sigh.

Court et percutant, avec un je ne sais quoi qui ressemblerait bien à de l'ironie, de la douce et acide ironie. Ça marche bien.

Tragically beautiful.