Diane Barnes's Reviews > The Postcard

This is classified as a novel, but the distance between fiction and reality is a thin one. The characters living and dead all existed, and this is their story. In 2003, Anne's mother receives a postcard addressed to her grandmother Myriam at her mother's home. It contains 4 names, all of whom had died at Auchswitz in 1942. Her grandmother had been dead for years, so who had sent the card, and why? 15 years later, Anne decides to look for the sender after her own 6 year old daughter is taunted in the schoolyard for being a Jew.

The hunt for the writer of the postcard is used to tell us the story of Ephraim and Emma Rabinovitch, and their 3 children, Myriam, Noemie and Jacques. Myriam survived and became the grandmother of Anne Berest, author of this book. It's a riveting tale and hard to put down, and the research is remarkable.

For anyone wanting a more complete review and personal impressions that are exceptionally well written, I refer you to Betsy Robinson. Her review led me to this book and I can't do a better job with my own.