Heir to the Glimmering World
Cynthia Ozick
(Reviewer - Coletta Ollerer)
2004 Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 0618470492

The Bronx of the 1930s fills with Europe's ousted dreamers, turned overnight into refugees.

A grand romantic novel of desire, fame, fanaticism, & unimaginable reversals of fortune as the author lovingly evokes these perpetual outsiders thrown together by surprising chance. The hard times they inherit still hold glimmers of past hopes & future dreams.

Associate Reviewer Coletta Ollerer writes:

Following a bleak motherless childhood cared for by an irresponsible & selfish father, Rose Meadows is abandoned when he takes a new job. Her distant cousin, Bertram, agrees to take her in, but her stay is short-lived, & she must find herself a new home. After answering a newspaper ad, she is accepted by Herr Mitwisser, to board at his home, & work there as his secretary.

The Mitwisser household is even more bizarre than her own had been. Herr M., a scholar recently escaped from Nazi Germany with his wife & children, came to America hoping to gain fame with his study of the Karaites, an obscure Jewish sect. Unfortunately, no one seems to care. Then a small college in Albany, offers him a modest position. He moves his there. His wife, Elsa, is distracted & unstable. His oldest daughter, Anneliese, is the cold & authoritative lady in charge. The three sons, Heinrich, Gerhardt, & Wilhelm, are high spirited & bent on their own agenda, while Waltraut, the youngest at only three, is a sad, confused & ignored little girl.

Things do not work out, & Herr M. quits the college & shunts his family into New York City ... to the Bronx, where Rose continues as his assistant in his scholarly work. There is very little money, but Anneliese hints that someone will come to their rescue.

When he does, James is bearing gifts & hope. Everyone is happy, except Mrs. M., who mistrusts his influence over her husband. James immediately starts escorting the lonely Anneliese out of an afternoon. Soon it becomes a habit, & then one day they do not return. Herr M. is torn by his anger for James, & his need for his support. Anneliese sends money to her father in their absence, until one day it stops.

Rose finds herself trying to fill Anneliese's role. “We were sinking still more deeply into wilderness -- the boys at war, underwear unwashed, pots boiling over, Mitwisser pacing behind a shut door, his wife finicky in her bed, Waltraut unbathed and growing dispirited. At times she fell into inconsolable howls. If I made order in one part, decay was already seeping into another part.” (p.190)

Rose's distant cousin Bertram suddenly turns up at the house, out of money, with no a job, hoping to beg Rose for help. She asks Herr M. if he might stay the night. Bertram immediately makes himself useful, & wins permission to stay on. Some time later Anneliese returns home alone, sick & penniless. Bertram extends his usefulness to include her, further ensconcing himself into the household.

In time, Rose finds herself becoming distanced from the family by virtue of Herr Mitwisser's distraction & hopelessness. She remembers how it had been... “Years later, that is how I imagine it: a motionless scene, I with my fingers stilled on the light-stippled glass of the typewriter keys .... he standing giantly over me, submerged in his dream of forgotten heresies. I see it that way, in stasis, as a kind of trance, in order to isolate those phantasmagorical hours from the turbulence and frights of that unhappy house.”(p.218)

Cynthia Ozick takes us on a murky voyage into these dysfunctional lives where we marvel at how these people find each other, & why they cling to or repel one another. A worthwhile read for the student of human behavior.

More from Cynthia Ozick:
Trust
The Puttermesser Papers
The Shawl
Metaphor & Memory: Essays, & more!
(05/08/05)

Coletta
2005©Coletta Ollerer
A RebeccasReads.Com Associate Reviewer

Reviewer's Bio:
I have always enjoyed writing. As a teenager I submitted to magazines like Seventeen, & was politely rejected. As a young mother, I had several poems published in The Chicago Tribune. Born in Chicago in 1932, I still live in the area. Since I retired, I have had some success on the Internet with my book reviews, stories & poetry. I enjoy historical fiction mostly, but will read anything uplifting, informative & fun. When I'm not reading & writing, I'm making jewelry, sewing needlepoint, & painting.