By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

“Confidential”

First novels can be tricky for short story writers, especially if their tales feel more like vignettes than complete works. However, Mikolaj Grynberg’s book “I’d Like to Say Sorry, But There’s No One to Say Sorry to: Stories” was so good, I looked forward to his first novel “Confidential” (The New Press). (To read The Reporter’s review of his first book, visit www.thereportergroup.org/features/off-the-shelf-tales-from-poland-and-israel-409333.) While his short novel (around 150 pages) is beautifully written and offers great insights into family life, it does have a few problems.
“Confidential” focuses on three generations of a Polish Jewish family. The grandfather is a Holocaust survivor who met his wife while they were confined in a ghetto. She managed to escape with their son, whose experiences left him never feeling completely secure. He’s married to a woman who spent the war in an orphanage, the result of which is that she has great difficulty managing her emotions. The behavior of their two sons also causes them concerns.
If you are confused by my use of pronouns rather than names, then you’ll understand one of the difficulties I had with the novel: The author does not give his characters names, which leaves readers puzzling out which character is being written about at any given time. The short chapters move backward and forward in time, which also complicates matters. While I don’t mind a novel that makes me work if it adds something to the story, that didn’t seem to be the case here. 
That made reading “Confidential” frustrating at times, since my first guess at the identity of a character was not always correct. Grynberg writes so well about the difficulties and joys of parent-child relationships in daily life (the regular ups and downs that occur as parents age and children grow up) that I wish I could have solely focused on that aspect of his work. The novel also contains insights into Jewish life in Poland after the war, where the surviving Jewish population has become invisible to the majority of those living in the country. There are some great pleasures in “Confidential,” but I wish they had come with less struggle. 

“The Safekeep” 

If you read the book jacket of “The Safekeep” by Yael Van Der Wouden (Avid Reader Press), you might wonder why it’s being reviewed in a Jewish newspaper. In fact, when I saw the book featured in lists of new books with Jewish content, I wondered the same. However, it only took me a few chapters to realize something that is not revealed until more than 150 pages into the work: its connection to Judaism.
In 1961, Isabel has lived alone in the family home since her mother passed way. Her two brothers sometimes visit: Louis, who’s been promised the house by the uncle who owns it, brings a new girlfriend with him each time. Hendrick, her younger brother, is gay and lives with his boyfriend, although both of his siblings refuse to acknowledge his sexuality. Isabel spends her days worrying that the young woman who comes to clean is stealing from her. She seems to have no friends and is, in general, a very unpleasant woman with whom to spend time. The only thing that has any meaning for her is the house and all it contains, objects she believes have always belonged to their family – that is, until she is reminded that the house was already furnished when the family arrived to take possession of it during World War II. 
Life might have always remained the same for Isabel except that when Louis brings Eva, his latest girlfriend to visit, he requests that Eva remain with Isabel when he has to leave the country for work. Isabel hates Eva at first sight; she also dislikes having someone else in the house and worries that Eva will also steal from her. But, as their relationship slowly begins to change, Isabel learns more about herself and her sexuality than she expected. Then someone disrupts their relationship, which is when it becomes clear why Eva was so eager to visit their home. 
While the final sections of “The Safekeep” confirmed my suspicions about the Jewish aspect of the plot, it was difficult to keep reading until that point. The majority of the novel takes place in Isabel’s mind and it is an extremely exasperating place to be because she doesn’t understand herself and the people around her. Even when I felt bad for her because her life was constrained and small, I found myself reading quickly since I was less interested in pages and pages of her emotional upheaval than I was in discovering how what little plot the novel contains would be resolved.