Featured books

Featured Websites

.: Reader Views Kids

Provides book reviews, by kids, for kids

.: Inside Scoop Live

Provides live author interviews for podcast

.: Authors Access

Provides interviews with experts in the publishing industry

.: Midwest Book Review

Provides post-publication reviews

.: Reader Views

Provides book reviews and author publicity

.: LR Communication Design

Provides professional website design and development

.: Blogging Authors

Provides a place where writers and readers meet

.: Review The Book

Provides 5 books reviews on 10 different sites

.: Best Sellers World

Provides book reviews and author features

.: Feathered Quill Book Reviews

Provides book reviews and author features

reviews

Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English

Natasha Solomons
Little Brown & Company (2010)
ISBN 9780316077583
Reviewed by Rita Grasshoff for RebeccasReads (09/10)


What would you do if you were forced to escape your country and had to adapt to your new home place?  Jack Rosenblum and his wife Sadie, along with their daughter Elizabeth, are forced to move to London from their home in Germany at the outset of World War II.  Their accents and the fact that they are Jewish set them apart.  Sadie has a hard time and dwells on those in her past.  Jack, however, tries to make the best of it and makes a list of what it takes to assimilate in his new country.  He starts with a pamphlet given to him when he entered the country.  He adds his own ideas to it.  He has an obsession with doing the “English” thing.

To be a proper Englishman, he feels that he must live up to the ideas he has made a list of.  He wants more than anything to fit in and not be noticed too much.  As he tells his daughter, “Only if we become like them can we hide amongst them.  We must not be poppies in the wheat field.”  Sadie’s style is to ignore what’s happening around her and lose herself in baking “cakes to help you remember” from her family cookbook. 

The story is told with humor, has endearing characters and draws you in.  Jack’s plan to build a golf course is fraught with obstacles, including his own ideas.  He and Sadie go through times that make you cheer for them, worry about them and wonder why he can’t see that in an effort to be a part of things, he tries to change things.  In his own bumbling way, Jack makes you really want him to succeed.  He learns a lot along the way and is a very endearing, funny man. Readers of all ages should enjoy this one.

Once I got started on this book, I had a hard time putting it down.   It’s not often that I can lose myself in a book like I did in this one.  It’s hard to believe this is a first novel.  I really liked the writing style of Ms. Solomons and look forward to more from this promising author!  


Reviewed by Enid Grabiner for RebeccasReads


This is a delightful, poignant account of German Jewish refugees trying so hard to assimilate in England in 1937.  Happily gaining visas to escape from looming anti-Semitism, Jack, Sadie, and baby Elizabeth Rosenblum set off to begin a new life in London.  Their joy is diminished as they must leave Sadie’s parents and brother who were not permitted to join them.

Jack is determined to create a successful new life for his family by following a pamphlet handed out to new immigrants on how to behave “English.”  As they settle, Sadie is however drawn to other German refugees, joining a synagogue, speaking in her native tongue, eating comfort foods and making friends with those of her own kind.  She longs to maintain a connection with her past, while Jack strives to become invisibly integrated into his new culture.  He builds a successful business and dresses the part of a proper gentleman, only to find in reality he is ostracized as a Jew, refused membership in a proper gentleman’s golf club.

In reaction to this slight, Jack becomes consumed with moving to Dorset and building his own golf course.  Sadie unhappily goes along with his plans, leaving her good life and friendships behind.  Faced with a dwindling bank account, an antagonistic community, destructive mole-holes and mystic woolly-pigs destroying his work, his obsession becomes more intense and soon negatively impacts his marriage.  Hitting rock-bottom creates a new path for Jack toward appreciation of the importance of family and friends.  He ultimately realizes that he need not shed the layers of his past to succeed.

Natasha Solomons creates this fictionalized story based on her own grandparents’ experience making this a personal heartfelt yet comic telling of her family history.