“I won’t let hate rule my life,” Elazar declares, but hatred of course upends everything he loves, as he and his loved ones head east, crossing through vividly evoked Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and elsewhere. The authors touchingly handle themes of loss and belonging as they dramatize, in brisk and poignant scenes, the everyday yet extraordinary experiences of refugee life. Elazar’s son strives to pronounce and remember the names of all the different places where they take refuge, an attempt at trying to create a new home for himself amidst the chaos. Elazar’s daughter, Rivka, meanwhile, eventually declares “I’m not going to bother learning how to pronounce that one,” frustrated to her bones with the constant movement, over rivers and seas, with no clear sense of direction beyond survival.
Despite the complexity of the political instability of the era, The Reluctant Conductor is at heart an elemental story of one family caught up in the larger context of geopolitics and genocide, a humane examination of the cost in individual lives of ancient hatreds.
Takeaway: Touching novel of a Jewish family’s flight across war-torn Europe.
Comparable Titles: Kristin Harmel’s The Forest of Vanishing Stars, Ellen Feldman’s The Living and the Lost.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-
“This is storytelling from the Old World, a panoramic sweep through the tortured times and people of Eastern Europe. It is the story of Elazar, a young Jewish violinist in search of redemptive love and transportive music, in a world full of ugly bigotry and hate. Drifting back and forth between Uzbekistan and the Ukraine between 1922 and 1944, our hero navigates wedding-night steam rooms and birch-branch floggings; rivers of refugees and rivers of blood; lice and typhoid and refugee tent camps; horse-drawn carriage rides through betrayal and death and flattened shtetls; and the small luxuries of the desperate, a simple plate of chicken and cabbage. But always, always, the ebb and flow of music, weaving in and out of a life lost in the terrifying wilderness, searching for family and home. Does our hero find what he is yearning for? Read the book to find out. I picked it up and had to find out what happened to Elazar, a character I cared about.”
5.0 out of 5 stars
Page-turning readability with fascinating historical accuracy
Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2023
Tim Turner and Moisey Gorbaty have written an emotionally powerful novel that captures Jewish life in the Soviet Union, before during and after WWII. The Reluctant Conductor depicts the hardship, oppression and hope of the era, combining the engaging storytelling of a novel against the turbulent history of the era.
In addition to finding it a great read, I particularly enjoyed the history as it enabled me to better understand the situation in Ukraine and with Russia today.
