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.