Reviews

The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick

cnx27's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

elisala's review against another edition

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4.0

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.

rinnselba's review against another edition

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5.0

Tragically beautiful.

sarah_irene's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

3.75

brooklyn614's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

glitter_b1tch's review against another edition

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5.0

Devastating, heart-wrenching, and beautiful all at once. Ozick's language is so luxurious and incisive, but it's also haunted with pain, anguish, and loss. A really amazing microcosmic exploration of the violence and destruction that the Holocaust wrought and the shattered aftermath for those people that survived.

aub_reads's review against another edition

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4.0

I don't usually pick up short stories and/or novellas (this is for a class), but I thought this was written in a way that was intense and interesting. As always with shorter texts, I'm left wanting to know more about the characters, but that's a personal thing. To come on the blog...soonish.

lianavalente's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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bgg616's review against another edition

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4.0

A friend who is a Holocaust scholar suggested that I read Cynthia Ozick. She recommended starting with this very short book. The Shawl is the first story and set in a death camp. T he second story, Rose, is about a Holocaust survivor who moves to Florida after closing her New York shop. She actually destroyed the shop. She hates Florida, and I was not sure she liked New York.
I am definitely going to read more Ozick.

veryperi22's review against another edition

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5.0


This short book has been easy to finish but hard to read.

The story is about Rosa, a survivor of the concentration camps. Rosa lost her baby to the Nazis, watching her being murdered. She never stops mourning her, never accepting her baby's death, never quite stepping out of her delusions.

She quotes her niece about the lives of survivors. Where normal people have nine lives, like cats, survivors have only three.
Before. During. After.
Rosa responds:
"Before is a dream. After is a joke. Only during stays. And to call it a life is a lie."

I think this nicely, painfully, sums up the book -- how Rosa cannot live anywhere else but there.

Rosa is a mother. Rosa is a woman watching the world moving on. Oblivious. Seemingly living a lie after the horror of the camps.
Rosa lost her baby.
The line between sanity and insanity is thin.
Rosa has gone mad.