Review by Booklist Review
Keilson, who died in 2011 at age 101, was a well-praised author of fiction and nonfiction whose early novels were banned in Hitler's Germany. In 1944, when he wrote this diary, Keilson was living with forged papers in Delft, in the German-occupied Netherlands. His parents were in a concentration camp, and he was presumably under constant fear of discovery. It is instructive that, even amid war and life-and-death uncertainty, it is intimated, mundane life goes on (his lover, Hanna, receives considerable attention). A true working poet, Keilson, for the most part, is a private man, widely read, spiritual, often painfully introspective, and not always likable. He writes poems to Hanna, to his wife, and for publication; after the diary's end, there is a collection of the sonnets written for Hanna. Though the sense of threat and terror that is oddly lacking in his diary is abundant in the poetry. A curious and often compelling literary artifact from the war years.--Levine, Mark Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
In 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands, Jewish German/Dutch novelist Keilson (Life Goes On) was a budding writer and psychologist living in hiding. He kept a diary through most of 1944, which was only discovered after his death in 2011. The diary is a deeply personal account, made even more remarkable that it was written during World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. Keilson recounts his complicated personal life; separated from his wife and young daughter, he was having an affair with a younger woman. He also extensively documents his struggle to reconcile his desire to write with his determination to become a doctor. The war is present in occasional comments-rumors of the English arrival in the Netherlands, notes about other Jews in hiding, the sound of distant bombs-especially in one lengthy entry written while he could hear German soldiers outside on the street rounding up Jews and conscripts. VERDICT A moving and fascinating read. Fans of Keilson's novels should definitely seek out this account of his development, as should readers interested in writers' memoirs or the daily experiences of Jews in Europe during World War II.-Nicholas Graham, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The wartime diary of a celebrated novelist.When Keilson (The Death of the Adversary, 2011) was in his 30s, he spent a period of time in hiding. In the early 1940s, the writer and psychotherapist fled to the Netherlands with his wife and daughter. But by 1944, the Netherlands had been occupied, and while his non-Jewish wife took their child to live elsewhere, Keilson acquired fake papers and moved in with the Rientsma family. During that period, the author had an affair with a younger Jewish woman, also in hiding, and composed a series of sonnets inspired by the affair; he also wrote fiction and kept a diary. Keilson's novels were first published in English only a few years ago, to great acclaim. The diary will be of great interest to fans of his fiction. He describes the ups and downs of his passion for Gertrud, his wife, and Hanna, his mistress. Regarding Hanna and the sonnets she inspired, Keilson writes, "I have the feeling of having sucked everything out of her it's possible to get, like out of a lemonand then turned it into poetry." Those sonnets are included in this volume. Searls, Keilson's capable translator, tells us that the "poems are written in a clipped, tightly coiled German," with "a wrought, elliptical, intense style." Unfortunately, those tight coils don't come across in translation; in English, the poems feel awkwarde.g., the first two lines of the first one: "I son, you daughter, children of one blood, / so bitter ripe for Death in his fierce mowing." In the diary, Keilson also includes notes on his readings as well as speculation on what life will be like after the war. Surprisingly, he spends little time describing that war and his experience of it. "Meanwhile, heavy fighting in the Netherlands!" he writes, in late September. "Nijmegen, Arnhem!" But then, in the next sentence: "These events, however much they grip me, are no longer my real life." The diary should appeal to readers of Keilson's fiction but not most general readers. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
