Starred review from February 1, 2010
Orringer's stunning first novel far exceeds the expectations generated by her much-lauded debut collection, How to Breath Underwater
. In this WWII saga, Orringer illuminates the life of Andras Lévi, a Hungarian Jew of meager means whose world is upended by a scholarship to the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris. There, he makes an unlikely liaison with ballet teacher Claire Morgenstern (née Klara Hász), a woman nine years his senior whose past links her to a wealthy Hungarian family familiar to Andras. Against the backdrop of grueling school assignments, exhausting work at a theater, budding romance, and the developing kinship between Andras and his fellow Jewish students, Orringer ingeniously depicts the insidious reach of the growing tide of anti-Semitism that eventually lands him back in Hungary. Once there, Orringer sheds light on how Hungary treated its Jewish citizens—first, sending them into hard labor, though not without a modicum of common decency—but as the country's alliance with Germany strengthens, the situation for Jews becomes increasingly dire. Throughout the hardships and injustices, Andras's love for Claire acts as a beacon through the unimaginable devastation and the dark hours of hunger, thirst, and deprivation. Orringer's triumphant novel is as much a lucid reminder of a time not so far away as it is a luminous story about the redemptive power of love.